


Decryption

by shini_amaryllis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ancient History, Ancient Runes, Archery, Athanas trying to kill Eleni in increasingly clever ways, Dumbledore making peoples lives difficult, Eleni and Dumbles butting heads, Elpis being helpful to her host, Erebeals trying to kill people, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gods, Nymphs & Dryads, Pandora's Box, Rune Analysts kicking serious ass, self-sufficient characters, unknown child of Lily and James
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shini_amaryllis/pseuds/shini_amaryllis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleni Demetriou did not live a simple life, not with her first family dead, her adoptive mother with them. She possessed an ancient artifact that many would fight for the right to have, and to protect it was her duty. No Erebeal was going to take It from her unless they were planning on killing her first. Pandora would have been proud. FredxOC</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Assortment of Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the 'AU about a witch in Greece who has mad skills in art but pushes it aside to become a Rune Analyst at thirteen' (if you have follow greygryffindor on tumblr, you know what I'm talking about). The timeline is a bit different because Eleni was born before Harry, which would mean that James and Lily had to be born a bit earlier since Eleni is born in 1977, and that'll be about a year after they were married…let's just say they were undercover longer.
> 
> I seem to have a thing about writing self-sufficient characters…haha…anyways, enjoy!

There was too much red.

The color blended together with the cream of the carpet, but it was a sharp contrast and they were not colors she would have chosen to mix, particularly in that way.

Eleni Demetriou's favorite color was green, anywhere from emerald to jade to viridian, but even those greens would not have mixed well with the wet crimson spilling across the floor from her mother's fallen body.

Eleni swallowed her fear and her terror as she looked upon the person responsible and she screamed as she lunged for her bow, still cast aside from her last archery meet of the year, firing her first shot that went over the first's head to lodge in the second's chest.

The last two arrows blurred in her fingers as she was flung back, her head making contact with wall and making stars dance before her eyes until her sight faded away into nothingness.

* * *

The Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot of the Greek Isles, Miss Gia Vasilis peered over her glasses with eyes filled with regret towards the girl sitting in the chair before her desk, clutching a folder with several parchments within.

"Let me first say how truly sorry I am for the death of your mother, Miss Demetriou," Miss Vasilis intoned.

Eleni Demetriou had been handling her mother's death with difficulty and it was only for her siblings' sakes that she had yet to break down.

She couldn't afford to fall to pieces when they needed her.

"Thank you," she said thickly, blinking her green eyes furiously to keep the tears at bay.

"Now, onto the task at hand," Miss Vasilis said, shuffling the papers on her desk. "Your mother left everything to you and your siblings, however, she did not specify who would care for you in the wake of her death before your seventeenth birthday, I understand this is why you wish to enact Law 2758-A, the Law of Guardianship?"

"Yes," Eleni said, wiping at her eyes quickly, "I know it's very rare to enact, but I've fulfilled the requirements, I've passed my NEWTs when I graduated from Athene Academy, I have a place for us to all live, and I have a copy of a letter from the Head of the Department of Curse-breaking offering me a position there based on my NEWT results." Eleni pulled the respective parchments from her folder to show the older witch.

"It seems you have," Miss Vasilis sighed. "Miss Demetriou, you do understand you will be caring for three ten year old children, don't you? You're nearly fourteen but you'll have to step into the duties of a mother. You will be in charge of providing for them, disciplining them when they go wrong, and nurturing them. They will be your priority."

Eleni's eyes glittered as she smiled slightly. "They always were, Miss Vasilis. My mother sat me down a few weeks ago, before I was to take my NEWTs and she told me how much we all meant to her. It's my job to keep us together, and that's what I'm going to do."

Determination shined on her face and Miss Vasilis couldn't help but be slightly relieved.

"You will be checked up on once every month for the next year to make sure that you are all in a stable environment," Miss Vasilis said before Eleni cut across her smoothly.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," she said, "Harry and the twins will be attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry come September."

"In Scotland?" Miss Vasilis stated in surprise. Athene Academy, though quite controversial for how young they started their students and graduated them, was one of the top schools of witchcraft in the world and was just in Athens and far less of a distance.

"My mother was a former Britain resident," Eleni explained, "she attended the school and Harry, Padma, and Parvati have been down since they were born."

"But not you?"

"Oh, I was removed," Eleni informed her, "I told Mum I wanted to start learning when I was little, right after she adopted me and Harry, so she enrolled me in Athene Academy and removed me from Hogwarts' list, that was about the time I asked her to change my name from Elena to Eleni."

Miss Vasilis scrawled her signature across the parchment before turning it and pointing out where she should sign.

"That's not much of a change," Miss Vasilis said with a smile, "any reason for it?"

"Eleni's more Greek," Eleni said with a shrug, "I just thought it suited me better than Elena…like I was starting over…" Her eyes grew distant, remembering the day Prema Demetriou pulled her and her brother from the wreckage of her family's home.

She signed her name in a flourish and handed the parchment back to her. "Is that all? Can I take my brother and sisters home? I'd like them to sleep somewhere comfortable."

"Your house is still a crime scene, Miss Demetriou," Miss Vasilis said reproachfully, "I'm afraid that's not possible."

"I meant our new home," Eleni corrected quickly, "I don't want them to go back…especially with what happened, as long as clothes and food can be taken from the house, if that's alright?"

"I'll send a request through the Auror Office," Miss Vasilis told her. "Your things should be delivered to you within a few hours."

"Thank you," Eleni said, standing swiftly, "for your time." And she left the room just as swiftly as she had entered, her long skirt swishing against her legs as she clicked the door shut behind her.

"How did it go?"

She smiled tiredly at her friend, Hypatia Eliades, who had been waiting for her to leave the room with an air of nervousness. "She granted me guardianship," Eleni said in relief, swallowing thickly.

"That's great!" Hypatia hugged her friend so tightly that Eleni might've cared about her ribs, but she was beyond the point of caring.

"I was s-so  _worried,"_  Eleni cried, the dam breaking as she held to her oldest friend.

"No one's going to take those three away from you," Hypatia promised, "and we're all here for you, Mum says you lot can stay with us until you're ready to leave, you know she loves to mother."

"Maybe I can pick up some tips," Eleni joked wetly as they parted and she smeared the tears from her cheeks.

"I don't think you need any," Hypatia told her kindly, looping her arm through her friend's, "come on, Mum's waiting outside with the car so we can grab your siblings and get you all some homemade food in your bellies before you head out, alright?"

"Alright," Eleni said, taking in a deep, shaking breath.

"You are all going to be fine, say it with me," Hypatia stressed as they began to walk.

"We are all going to be fine," Eleni repeated.

She only wished she believed it as easily as she said it.

* * *

"What do you think?"

Padma looked around the room, her eyes still red-tinged from crying and the skin around her eyes rubbed raw.

"It's…big," she croaked.

Eleni smiled from where she was leaning against the doorframe. "Darling, the whole house is big, it means we've got lots of room."

Padma sat down on the bed, still looking around at the tan colored walls. "Can you paint this?" she asked.

Eleni chewed on the inside of her mouth. "You know I haven't touched my paints in a while…I need to make new ones…"

In the months leading up her NEWTs, she'd had to put aside all distractions. Her bulky camera was gathering dust in her desk and her easel had remained undisturbed.

Her younger sister gave her a pleading look.

"What did you want me to paint?" Eleni asked finally, having a weakness for her siblings using their big eyes on her.

"Something to do with the sea," Padma said thoughtfully.

"It's right outside, you don't need to look very far."

Padma fisted the white comforter on the bed, her dark eyes distant and wet. "E-Eleni?"

"Yeah, Pads?" Eleni asked gently, moving forward to kneel on the floor in front of her.

"I miss Mummy."

"I know, Pads, I know," Eleni murmured, her hands reaching out to squeeze Padma's. Padma had always had a fascination with their different skin tones; Eleni's was a light olive, as was Harry's, inherited from their biological mother. "I do too…why don't you figure out what you want me to paint and I'll go grab some of the things that the Aurors dropped off."

She left the room quickly and Padma peeked her head out of the doorway to see her older sister leaning a hand against the wall, her shoulders shaking with the strain of keeping her sobs silent. But a moment later she straightened her back and continued down the hall to the stairs.

Harry, Padma, and Parvati were still distraught over their mother's death and Eleni was too but she couldn't show it; she had to be strong for them. They couldn't see how her face contorted or how the tears fell from her eyes or how her heart beat painfully in her chest.

Eleni wiped at her eyes with her hand, breathing in a shuddering breath as she moved through the kitchen to inspect the letters on the table. The longer she looked at the letters on the paper the bigger a headache she got. She pulled out her black-rimmed glasses, pushing them up on her nose with a sigh.

"What's that?"

Eleni started at the sudden voice, turning swiftly to see her brother walking towards her, his rectangle spectacles falling down his own nose.

"It's nothing, Harry," she said, "just paperwork."

"What kind of paperwork?" her ten-year-old brother pressed, blinking his red-rimmed eyes at letters in question.

Eleni cleared her throat loudly, swallowing her tears. "Condolence letters mostly…some monthly vault amounts from Gringotts…adult stuff."

Her brother leaned into her side and she wrapped an arm around him shoulders, squeezing them as comfortingly as she could manage.

"What's going to happen to us?" he asked.

Eleni knelt down, gripping his hands in her own. In looks the two were very much alike. They had both inherited Lily Evans' green eyes and James Potter's dark hair, though Eleni's was a more manageable mess than Harry's.

"Hey," she said softly, "I'm not going anywhere, I promise…I know it's going to be a little…strange with me acting like M-Mum, but we're going to get through it, okay?"

She brushed his fringe to the side and kissed directly over the lightning bolt scar on his forehead before hugging him tightly, feeling two more pairs of arms wrapping around them from behind.

"I'm going to keep you all safe," she whispered, "I promise I won't let anyone get to you."

And Eleni meant that completely and truly. It was her fault after all that they were all left motherless, the Erebeals had only been after her, but their mother had stood between her daughter and danger and had paid for it with her life.

Prema had been buried a hero and Eleni had lived with the knowledge that she was the reason for it.

In one short day her entire life had been uprooted. Her family ripped apart as she struggled to keep the twins and Harry out of the foster system, and her friends stunned and shocked by the turn of events.

Eleni remembered a time when they'd all been thick as thieves, which was only a few short weeks previously. She remembered studying so hard for her NEWTs that Parvati would swear up and down that her brain was going to melt out of her ears, she remembered how she laughed when Alex had pulled her away from studying, kissing her lightly to distract her. She remembered how ecstatic she'd been when he'd asked her to the winter ball and how widely she'd grinned when her mother and Hypatia's had taken their pictures together, proclaiming that their daughters were so lovely that even the gods' attention would shift to them.

But those times were gone, long gone.

A prison separated her from Alex Pallas and she wasn't intending only decreasing the distance anytime soon, not with the image still painted in her mind. The reds stained across his hands from the blood flowing from her mother's chest, him standing over her fallen form, her wand thrown to the side and her dagger hanging in her frozen grip.

There was no greater pain than watching the life fade from your mother's eyes, and Eleni had seen it twice now.

Eleni had seen enough of death and had felt enough of loss, but she would protect her siblings even if it took the last of her breath in her body.

* * *

Her weight shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as she looked up at the house that had been her home since she was four years old.

"You don't have to go in if you don't want to."

Eleni glanced to her side where Beniamin Makris was standing with an expression of understanding. Beni, Hypatia, Alex, and she had been best friends for as long as Eleni could remember. The olive-skinned Greek who had been dating Hypatia for the better part of three months after so many years of friendship and Eleni had barely dated Alex one and a half before everything had gone to hell in a hand basket.

"I do," she said finally, looking up at the stained-glass window she'd made with her sisters and brother when she was nine that looked little more than a mass of colors in various different shapes but that their mother had insisted was more beautiful than anything else she'd seen. "Who else is going to clean it out if it's not me?"

"Pati and I could do it," Beni offered helpfully.

"I'd rather I do something than sit around moping all day," Eleni disagreed. "I need something to do or I will go insane before next Wednesday."

The next week, she, Beni, and Hypatia would be starting at the Department of Curse-Breaking. It was funny how they had ended up wanting a similar profession, except for Alex who had desired to be an Auror, but Eleni tried hard not to think about Alex.

"That's right, you haven't gone in yet, have you?" Beni asked, glad to keep the conversation from something that might upset his friend, such as her mother's death and her ex-boyfriend's imprisonment. "Pati and I did and our offices are really nice."

"Are they?" Eleni asked faintly, only half-listening as they walked through the door.

The house was empty and silent, dead like its owner. It was unnerving to Eleni when she was finally permitted to step foot inside the house. The blood was gone, wiped clean by mere hours once the investigation had concluded but that didn't stop Eleni's eyes from wandering to the spot where the most of it had been.

Eleni visibly shook herself as they moved past the unstained carpet, with their cardboard boxes laden in their hands, making first for the kitchen. "Big enough for all my books?"

Beni grinned briefly. 'Big enough for all my books' was somewhat of a nervous tick of Eleni's that she'd always used since she was little. Eleni had always been a big book reader and that was how she measured everything. "Definitely."

Eleni's eyes glimmered and her lips twitched briefly, but she said nothing more on the subject as she opened the cabinets and began to pile the various cups and plates and bowls of different shapes and designs into one box.

"Okay, um, don't mix the herbs and spices with the potion ingredients," Eleni said, binding her hair to the top of her head in a high ponytail. "You can just throw out any of the food in the fridge, we'll just get some new stuff later…I'm going to go and clean out Pad, Parv, and Harry's rooms."

Beni muttered something akin to a response, but Eleni had already moved past him, boxes tucked under her arm as she took the stairs.

The twins and Harry's rooms held considerably less than Eleni, who had always had the largest room of the four, one of the upsides of the being the eldest and being the only one going to an advanced academy.

This meant there was considerable less clothes to pack up and less items to place in the box with care.

Harry had the least and Parvati the most with Padma somewhere in between, books scattered in piles across the floor, but at long last, she had finished emptying the rooms of anything important, and then it was time to move on to her room.

Eleni's was the most colorful and patterned like her clothing style. Lights were strung around her room and a red blanket with spiral designs had been thrown over her window to block out the sun when she was studying. Eleni pulled it loose, folding it up and allowing light to stream into the room. Her various notebooks were open and strewn across her bed thick with ink including so many notations on runes. She pulled one of her boxes towards her, piling the notebooks into it.

She plopped herself in front of her desk that was covered with so many parchments covered with notes that she'd taken for her NEWTs. It was funny how things had been so different. Her mother couldn't get her to eat at the table with her siblings in the month up to her exams, taking her food up to her room that she'd shut herself in, eating as she studied.

She should have taken the time to eat with them but she'd just been so focused on scoring high on her exams that nothing could distract her from it.

But Eleni couldn't think about that. She lifted the framed photo that she'd propped up on her desk. Her mother was beaming as brightly as any of her children all of whom had their arms thrown around each other…one big happy family. Eleni sighed, smoothing her thumb across her mother's face. She didn't see how they could get back to being like that without her; she was the one that made the family.

Eleni dropped the photo into the box and continued her task of cleaning out her room after taking the first few boxes down to the pile up in front of the door. She could have probably done most of it by magic, it would certainly have made the packing quicker, but she wanted to do it by hand.

There wasn't much to her desk, but her closet was an entirely different manner. The number of clothes within was more than Parvati and Eleni wasn't much of a fashionable person (though Hypatia would disagree), and her books in her various bookshelves greatly outnumbered that of Padma's.

It took longer than she would ever admit to clean out her closet, but she did have a lot of clothes, so it made sense and once there was nothing left she could see what she had hidden so clearly.

The wooden box did not bear any intricate designs or runes carved into its surface, that would have given it away far too easily. Eleni remembered well the day she'd dug it up in the backyard when she'd been feeling in the mood to plant some flowers to liven up the lawn. She'd hid it in her closet once she'd realized what it was and had never spoken of it again. The box was still encrusted with long-dried mud and Eleni knew that nothing would have changed if she opened it to check and see if it was still within. But at the same time, she couldn't resist doing so.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips and she clasped the lock shut once more.

Only Hypatia knew of the box, as she had been the one with her when she'd found it, and they'd both been fascinated by the inscribed runes that the object within bore. But they both knew better than to trifle with something as dangerous as it clearly was.

It was that box that the Erebeals, creatures of Old and Dark Magick sought, and the only way to truly find it was to kill its dryad guardian. That was how the legend went.

" _Always fear the Dark, Ellie," Prema had told her adoptive daughter with eyes so serious that Eleni had swallowed thickly, "for you know what lies within."_

" _The Erebeals," Eleni had whispered, hugging her pillow tightly to her chest._

" _Did you know that your mother was a descendent of an ancient line?" Prema had asked her._

_Eleni had answered honestly. "No." Her memories of her biological parents were few in number –though more than Harry's by far– and they were treasured, but Eleni hardly knew a thing about their history other than what she'd been told, which was that her father was a Pure-blood and her mother a Muggle-born, but it had never particularly mattered to her._

" _You will find that most in the world are distant relatives of gods and nature spirits," Prema had informed her, "it is how some families have certain affinities—"_

" _Like what?"_

_Prema had smiled. "Like how the Demetriou family is skilled in water magic…to be in the sea is to be at home…it is how the Metamorphmagi of the Black family can change their appearance at will, by mere feeling through their distant connection to the Love Goddess…it is how the Greengrass family can remain firmly seated on the fine Grey line between Light and Dark, from the blessing of Adrestia, the one who balances the two."_

" _Who am I related to?" Eleni had wondered curiously._

_Prema had surveyed her adoptive daughter carefully. "It is said," she spoke finally, "that the Potters walk in Death's shadow, descendants of Thanatos himself…but of that I am not certain…however, I do know of whose line Lily bore."_

_Eleni listened with rapt attention._

" _It was a dryad, one of the eight daughters of Oxylos and Hamadryas, Aigeiros of the Black Poplar…do you know why her blood is so special?"_

_A dark head of hair shook from side to side._

" _Only those of her blood were deemed strong enough to protect a very ancient artifact, to remain untainted by its possession," Prema had said._

Eleni looked at the box with a bit of apprehension. She had always shied away from that part about her. She had never told Prema that she had found It, she had been too afraid.

She knew there had been other protectors before her…dozens since ancient times, as the artifact only appeared when it had chosen its protector.

And with _It_  came the Erebeals. The stories went that they were once men but the Dark Magick within them had warped them into something unrecognizable, a plague on Greece, one of Eleni's books had called them. They brought only pain and suffering, so it was an understandable shock to discover Alex allying with them…killing her own mother.

Eleni wasn't sure her heart could recover from a betrayal like that.

But she still stood and walked, preparing to turn a new page in the book of her life and between her hands, within the box, Elpis' Pithos pulsed with life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is going to mostly be about Eleni and the Erebeals storyline isn't through; theoretically I could have started the story earlier in her life, but this is where it ended up.
> 
> The pairing is FredxOC for this one, since George will be with Angie (as in canon), I hope that doesn't disappoint anyone…
> 
> I feel pretty good about this fic and I've got a lot of great ideas that I've been working on for years, no lie.
> 
> You'll see a lot about Ancient Runes and ancient civilizations in this fic (some of which might be implemented into Looking Beyond given Hope's occupation choice), and more of Bill, I think.
> 
> More Greek stuff and mythology in this fic as opposed to Looking Beyond which for the most part only referenced and alluded to the presence of gods (with the exception of Death himself).


	2. Rune Analysts of Greece

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad for the positive response this fic has already received. I was really worried about posting it because I wasn't sure people would receive it well, but it has been stewing about in my mind for about four years. I've only recently begun to strip away everything that would have made it bad and fixed it up in a way that inspires me to write it further.
> 
> Aelin08 asked a question about whether or not this was considered a cross-over: The answer is technically no. It's not like its Percy Jackson. The gods are far removed from the world at this point, with the only one being in direct contact with humans (-dryads) being the Goddess of Hope herself, Lady Elpis. She's probably the only god that will appear in this fic, but the others will be referenced (and sworn by).
> 
> A humorous note: I came up with Hypatia and Beniamin randomly and I've only just realized that all their nicknames end in 'i'. Eleni's nickname is 'Eli' pronounced like 'Ellie' because she's just weird like that.
> 
> Thanks for the support!

"You know what makes me sad?" Beniamin asked rhetorically, squinting in the sunlight even with sunglasses perched on his nose to block out the sun. "Places like these."

"Ruins?" Hypatia asked, arching a delicate eyebrow.

Beniamin didn't even have to look at his girlfriend to know she was smirking at him. "Yes, how could people let something as glorious as this fall into ruin? I mean _, look at it_ , Pati!"

"I've been looking at it for the past three hours," Hypatia informed him wryly, her brown eyes flitting over to where Eleni was with her stomach flat against the stone, inspecting one misshapen stone with apparent interest from behind upturned spectacles. "Did you find anything, Eli?" she called over to her.

Eleni looked up, darkened lenses clipped to her spectacles to keep the sun out and not become too bulky, but her blonde hair was nearly blinding. Shortly after the Demetrious had gotten settled in their new home, now known as Villa Mer, Eleni had colored her hair a golden blonde that was as far from her midnight black that she could possibly get. The color suited her better than the black had, Hypatia had to admit.

"Maybe," Eleni mused, turning back to their findings.

The Head of the Department of Curse-Breaking, Galen Argyrius, and subsequently Eleni, Hypatia, and Beniamin's boss, had given them their first assignment in the field, so to speak.

They had been sent to the ruins of Brauron that had once been the location of one of Artemis' temples back in ancient times. It was also said to be one of the twelve major city-states that had merged into one unified with Athens.

It was a test of sorts, of that Eleni was almost entirely certain. The ruin had been excavated before by witches and wizards of the Greek Isles back in the early seventeen hundreds, but magic and knowledge of the ancient times had advanced.

" _A new set of eyes on the ruins may impart new knowledge," Argyrius had said, looking at them all over his thick spectacles. "Let us see if there was something the original researchers missed, shall we?"_

Eleni pulled herself up so she was standing and there as a spark in her eyes that the pair had not seen since before Prema Demetriou's death.

"Rune Analyst Raptis and Sanna…how did they consider Brauron to come into the state that it's currently in?" Eleni asked, practically bubbling in excitement.

The farther back you went in history, the fewer documentations there were, that much had been clear to start with, it was one of the annoying things about the past. A good bit of Greece's history had been stored in the Library of Alexandria, which, contrary to popular opinion, had not been burned to the ground but had instead vanished completely.

It was the greatest mystery in the magical world, mostly because the library had held many scrolls containing subjects of magic within. But in an effort to keep the non-magical folk from discovering of magic, a burning was faked.

And so much history was lost.

There were no accounts to speak of concerning how Brauron became in the state it was.

"RA Sanna came to the conclusion that the priests and priestesses of Artemis abandoned Brauron after a toxin was introduced to river water from a flood by the Sea of Crete caused by excessive rainfall that year," Beniamin recited from memory and he and Hypatia picked their way towards their friend. "Why?"

"Imagine RA Sanna had never come to that conclusion for a second," Eleni advised, waving her hands around her, "if you didn't know any of that, what would you assume from how the ruins are right now?"

Both paused and looked around the ruins, eyes fastening on the many structures that remained.

"I suppose it could look as though it had been attacked," Hypatia conceded after a soft moment of contemplation.

Eleni bobbed her head eagerly.

"But we would have found some details concerning an attack on a temple from that time period," Beniamin countered. "If anything it simply fell into disrepair from being worn down by the elements."

"Either way, we're back to square one," Hypatia sighed.

"No, we're not," Eleni disagreed, shaking her head as she curled her fingers in the 'come hither' gesture, directing them towards the center of the structure where the sacred spring was. Spring wasn't entirely accurate given how it was shaped, it was more likely to be considered a fountain, but that was beside the point. Its stone was chipped and broken, but the murky water within remained. "If you were about to be attacked and you had some priceless artifacts, what would you do with them?"

"Hide them," Beniamin said automatically.

Eleni snapped her fingers. "Exactly. And if you knew that the first place pillagers would look for anything worth any amount of money in the temple, then where would you hide them instead?"

"A grave?" Hypatia suggested first, and while it was a rather clever idea, it didn't much suit the setting, given how unlikely it was for a temple to have open graves at the time in question.

"How about underneath the surface?" Eleni asked with a smirk faintly touching her lips as she nodded towards the mostly undisturbed spring.

"No  _way,"_  Beniamin gaped, his eyes dropping to the water.

"I would have overlooked the spring," Hypatia agreed in a similar tone. "But it does make sense…it _has_  to be protected by magic in order to have been mostly undisturbed for all these years."

Eleni pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, her olive cheeks flushed with excitement as her friends joined her in closely investigating the spring with fascination.

"Over here," Beniamin called after a few minutes of tense silence, "there's a rune carved here, on the inside of the fountain."

It was a Moon Glyph that consisted of two dots and a line curling between them, the symbol for water. Moon Glyphs had been quite popular along with Blood Runes back in ancient times after Greece's enemies had gained knowledge of their alphabet. They had been used to keep their enemies from finding out their strategies during wartime; it had been quite effective. However, the Old Runes fell out of practice, considering the amount of magic (and blood for the Blood Runes) required to make the runes work properly.

Beniamin placed his thumb against it, humming the Greek word, and it worked.

There was a loud, echoing crack that filled the air as the bottom of the fountain fell away, stone, water, and whatever coins had been tossed within as a form of luck.

All that remained was what appeared to be an empty hole that went on and on.

"We're going to need some more rope," Hypatia's voice echoed.

And she wasn't wrong there. The trio had to waste a good portion of time in finding some rope before they realized they could actually conjure what they needed.

"Ladies first," Beniamin offered.

"Coward," Hypatia returned with a note of fondness, patting his cheek as she took the rope before Eleni could, lowering herself into the darkness below.

"Oh,  _wow,"_  her voice reverberated upwards.

"What is it?" Eleni asked before Beniamin could. "How far down does it go?"

The darkness shrouded Eleni's friend and it unnerved her slightly to hear Hypatia's voice coming from it.

"Nothing's wrong," she promised, awe present in her voice (Eleni could just imagine her looking around in wonder) "you just have to  _see_  this! It's not that far, just come on!"

Eleni and Beniamin shared a glance before they both shrugged. Eleni took the rope tightly, carefully lowering herself down within.

It was pitch black and the cold air tickled Eleni's skin. The only source of light came from the Aetherstone hanging from one of Eleni's belt loops. The Greek Isles had made a number of advancements in Curse-breaking, more than most, owing to the stone in question, which acted as an alternative light source for those who went into the deep to bring up ancient artifacts, as magic was more likely to trip traps left behind.

And then Eleni's feet brushed the floor, giving two jerks to the rope to tell Beniamin he could follow after.

"Pati?" she asked into the silence.

"Here," came a voice to her right and Eleni turned in that direction, grasping the stone tightly in her hand, the light showering over the dark tunnel. It made Hypatia wince when it fell on her, but it did little to dampen her excitement.

"Eli,  _look at this!"_  Hypatia ran a hand over one of the rough arches of stone that had been man-made eons ago. The tunnel was marvelous. There was lengthy pool of the same murky water as above that had walking paths on either side, supporting arches kept the earth above from sinking down into the hidden tunnel. "I've never  _seen_  anything as old as this is so well preserved!"

Neither had Eleni for that matter. It was clear that they were perhaps the first to set foot in the tunnel in several millennia.

"Oh my  _Zeus,"_  Beniamin's jaw had fallen open when he came down to join them,  
am I seeing things?"

" _No!"_  Hypatia cried in delight, throwing her arms around him and giving him a kiss for good measure that Eleni tried not to look at.

Thankfully, she found herself easily distracted by something that she couldn't quite place.

It was like something was there, something that couldn't be seen.

"Who's there?" she demanded into the darkness.

"Eli?" Beniamin asked in confusion, parting from his girlfriend. "No one's been down here probably since the day Brauron was attacked."

But Eleni couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was something there, it was a feeling that she'd been getting used to in the wake of her mother's death. It was like being in the presence of someone she couldn't see, but one who could see her.

It sent a shiver down her spine when she had first considered it to be an Erebeal, but they came from shadow, so they didn't need to disappear completely, as long as there was some shadow nearby.

"I just…thought I saw something, is all," Eleni said, breathing out sharply, missing the look Hypatia and Beniamin exchanged behind her. "It was probably just the something fluttering in the air."

It sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than the other way around, but neither commented on it.

"Shall we go on?" Eleni didn't even wait for them to voice affirmations before stepping carefully over stone, leaping lightly over the slim pool to perch on the opposite side, leaving the other two on the right-hand side. "Discoveries to be made, after all."

And the glint in her eyes was back, just like that.

* * *

"Thanks so much for watching them for me, Molly."

Mrs. Weasley smiled as she poured hot tea into a cup for the witch sitting across from her. "It's nothing, dear, let them come over as much as you like."

Eleni gave her a tired smile. Since Prema's death, Hypatia's mother, Iva, and Mrs. Weasley juggled watching the younger Demetriou siblings when Eleni had to work weekends. The school year was almost done for them, and then they'd be on their own for hours of days without her. They were nearly at the age where Eleni could leave them on their own and know that they wouldn't burn the house down while she was away, but they'd have to be at least twelve for that.

Mrs. Weasley was an old friend of Prema's, that was how the Demetriou siblings had become friends with the Weasleys. Eleni had remained a bit dubious, because Prema was a good decade younger than Mrs. Weasley, but she didn't question it.

Just as Mrs. Weasley had seen Harry's scar and hadn't mentioned it when Ron and Harry had first become friends.

"I don't want to impose," Eleni said, fingering her cup of tea as she looked out the door to where the exuberant yells were coming from as figures on broomsticks flitted past. She had never understood the appeal; she was a very grounded person that preferred keeping her feet in the earth where they belonged.

"Eli," Mrs. Weasley reached across the table to pat Eleni's hand gently. "We really don't mind having them…Padma keeps to herself, Parvati and Ginny get on very well, and Harry and Ron are practically brothers; it's no trouble."

Ginny was the youngest of the Weasley brood, and as the only girl, she had practically latched onto the Demetriou sisters. She had been quieter when she was younger, but it seemed exposure to Parvati had made her a bit more outspoken, as the older twin didn't have any trouble making herself heard.

The sound of laughter drew Eleni's attention outside, her eyes growing distant as she listened to the sound of the boys having fun only to be interrupted by Ginny's loud voice declaring it was her turn.

"Can I ask you," Mrs. Weasley began cautiously, "about your biological parents?"

Eleni blinked, her attention focusing on the woman in front of her. "What about them?"

Molly Weasley's red hair was spun with stray gray, but the red was as bright and obvious as her children's were. It was color unlike Lily Potter's, whose had been a dark red closer to rose petals than fire. And her eyes were a gentle brown that had only been one of the colors that James Potter's hazel had held.

Realization shone in Eleni's own green orbs. "You mean because James and Lily Potter only had one child."

Mrs. Weasley gave her a soft smile that seemed more sad than anything.

Eleni frowned for a few moments. "The only people that knew about me were my father's friends and Prema, she was my mother's midwife…they thought it would be better that way; the fewer people that knew I existed, the better it would be to hide me."

It was a sound plan.

"My godfather was a man named Remus Lupin," Eleni continued, "my father called him 'Moony'…he actually wanted Padfoot, my brother's godfather, to be mine, but Moony was with both my mothers when I was born and Mum said he and her got on very well."

It was often confusing how Eleni referred to James, Lily, and Prema all as her parents, as it she had one father and two mothers, which was true, but it was sometimes difficult to follow.

"The night they were killed," Eleni said hollowly, swallowing thickly and making Mrs. Weasley wonder if the memory still haunted her, "is was asleep in my room…but all the shouting woke me up. I tried to open the door but it wouldn't budge."

Mrs. Weasley wondered if she'd ever told anyone that story before, and she wondered if she should tell her to stop.

"Mum told me later that my father had put a protection spell over the room, to keep people out, it would take a considerable force to break through, and Harry's had the same…" Eleni swallowed a gulp of tea, her spectacles reflecting the light slightly before she lifted her gaze to meet Mrs. Weasley who was surprised by the fire in the green irises.

"I was the one left behind in the burning house while my brother was rescued," she said coolly, "now, I could never hate my brother for that, Harry's far too innocent and was only a year old at the time, but I would have died if Mum had come looking for me…so that whole thing about 'the Boy-Who-Lived disappears' was just my Mum taking us to a place we wouldn't be recognized and raising us in a loving environment."

It must have been terrible stuck in the house alone as it burned, but here she was, alive and healthy.

" _Eli!"_  A cry came shortly before a red blur smacked into Eleni, sloshing her tea across the table and earning the girl a reproachful noise from her mother. "Eli, they won't let me play!"

Eleni straightened her glasses to look at Ginny who was practically vibrating with anger. "And why's that?" she inquired.

"Because I'm a  _girl!"_  Ginny raged as Parvati peeked her head around the doorway with interest. Her silky dark hair was up in a high ponytail with two braided strands she'd dyed crimson three days previously in a fit of irritation that Eleni wasn't entirely sure what the cause was. She'd still been annoyed even afterwards, so Padma had done the same with her hair, only coloring her strands a bright blue, and for some reason that had helped.

"Is that all?" Eleni asked, her lips twisting up into a smile as she ran a hand soothingly through her hair. "Well, why don't you go kick their arses, then?"

Brown eyes glittered and she practically flew off.

Not ten minutes later, Fred and George, Mrs. Weasley's own identical children, stomped in and jabbed their fingers in Eleni's direction as she sipped her tea innocently.

" _Traitor!"_  they declared as one.

"Darlings," Eleni said with a bit of amusement (she had a habit of calling almost anyone 'darling' if she knew them for more than two months), "if a nine year old witch can kick your arse without much training, I would call her a natural, wouldn't you?"

She arched an eyebrow and George shook his head, gaping at her whilst Fred spluttered incoherently.

Harry was sniggering behind his hand as Ron rolled his eyes. Ginny, on the other hand, looked exceedingly proud with Harry's broom over her shoulder (she'd clearly convinced him to hand it over and Harry didn't quite seem to mind).

"I almost forgot," Eleni said suddenly, removing something carefully from her bag before enlarging it and handing it to Mrs. Weasley.

It was a crockpot filled with what she recognized to be a dish that Prema had always brought with her when they had lunches or dinner together.

"Lamb kleftiko, for watching the little troublemakers," Eleni said, jerking her head towards the general direction of the three in question.

" _Hey!"_  Padma complained, pointing instead towards the Weasley twins. "They're the troublemakers!"

George clutched his chest as though he was wounded and Fred bypassed him completely, flopping onto the ground as though fatally injured. Eleni swallowed, imagining Prema lying in a pool of her own blood, but the image faded swiftly as Fred sat up and George continued to speak.

"My  _dear_ , Padma! I am wounded by your harsh words!" he cried dramatically, and Eleni smiled faintly.

"I'm sure you'll recover," she countered swiftly.

" _Ooh!"_  echoed around the kitchen.

"She gets that from you," Fred told Eleni with certainty and the Rune Analyst swept a loose golden curl over one shoulder.

"Well, of course," she said, batting her eyelids in a flirtatious manner, smirking. Fred's breath caught in his throat briefly before he remembered to breathe again. "It's one of my finest qualities."

Mrs. Weasley gave a pointed cough that turned the attention of all the children in the room towards her, varying shades of blue, brown, and green eyes focusing on her.

"Eleni and I were discussing what you are all going to be doing for Christmas break," she said.

"You mean when you, Dad, and Gin go and see Charlie without us?" Ron offered with a rather petulant expression.

The second eldest Weasley child had been accepted as a dragon-handler-in-training at the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary, which was a high honor, considering the kind of marks you had to get in order to be accepted. However, money was tight with the Weasleys (something that wasn't mentioned), so the only ones who would be able to see Charlie would those at home at the time.

"Yes," Mrs. Weasley's smile was a trifle brittle before it smoothed over, "that one…Eleni has offered to let you lot stay with her and her siblings in Villa Mer for the holidays."

It was so silent that if you listened had enough you probably could have heard the chickens clucking in the chicken coop.

And then there was an explosion of noise that made Eleni's ears ring.

Fred and George were cheering, but she couldn't quite make out the words, Ron was bouncing on his toes in excitement, Percy had furrowed his eyebrows, Ginny was complaining loudly, and Harry and the twins looked ecstatic (though that was more of Harry than his sisters).

"Alright, calm down," Eleni said, making a sort of placating gesture as she stared at them all, only a bit aghast at the response.

"Mum, can't I go?"

"Don't you want to see your brother, dear?" Mrs. Weasley asked in surprise, but she didn't miss the longing expression her youngest threw towards the others.

"Yeah, but…"

"Next year you can join them," she said firmly, "once you're in Hogwarts."

Ginny pouted something fierce, but she fell silent.

"How big is Villa Mer?" Percy asked.

"A bit big," Harry said, scratching his cheek thoughtfully, "we don't use most of it…Eli's claustrophobic."

Eleni smiled thinly.

"But there's lots of room to fly," Parvati added.

"And swim," Padma interjected, smiling dazedly. "Adelfi, can we eat on the beach for Christmas?"

Adelfi was the Greek word for 'sister' that the younger Demetrious sometimes used when speaking to their sister or about her.

"If that's what you want," Eleni said easily, "but you're all helping me make that feast."

Ginny gave a pitiful moan, hanging her head slightly as she listened to her siblings prattle on in excitement as though she wasn't even there.

"Don't you worry, Ginny." Eleni gave her a wink. "You'll be there next year to enjoy the fun."

That made her feel better, but only a little.

"I could just kiss you!" Fred declared, privately pleased by the faint pink that spread across Eleni's cheeks.

"Restrain yourself, darling," she said, "we wouldn't want to give anyone nightmares."

The laughter that followed belled out and spilled from the open door of the Burrow out onto the wet grass of the yard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I should probably point out the other ships I've currently got for this fic: ElenixFred, HarryxGinny, RonxHermione, GeorgexAngelina, BillxFleur. Any suggestions for the others, particularly Padma and Parvati?
> 
> I looked up that Greek history, so I'm not sure if its entirely accurate, but this is fanfiction, so it doesn't really have to be...there will be more concerning The Greek Trio (that's what I'm going to call Eli, Pati, and Beni) doing their job, this is just a teaser :)
> 
> Remus is Eleni's godfather! That was a twist, I almost wound up with Sirius being both Eli and Harry's godfather, but ah well. At this point Mrs. Weasley doesn't know who Harry's godfather is and she's unfamiliar with the name Padfoot.
> 
> If one of you knows Greek (whether being from Greece or speaking it) and can tell me if 'adelfi' is the correct way to spell the Greek word for 'sister' it'd be much appreciated, because I'm an American that only speaks English and French (to a degree)


	3. Words of Iolanthe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A guest asked me about the age difference concerning Fred and Eleni. Eleni was born in 1977 and Fred was born in 1978. I only changed the timelines a bit concerning when the Potter family for the most part. Lily and James were born a few years earlier so instead of Harry being born a year after they married, that was Eleni. They'd gone into hiding before Lily was showing, which is how so few know about Eleni. The timeline for the other characters are mostly the same.
> 
> In my version, Magical Greece is one of the most advanced magical communities around the world, so you'll see use of pens instead of quills, among other things.

Eleni had been staring at the blank canvas for a better part of an hour, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully, her arm still poised with paintbrush in hand.

The room was remarkably empty, uncluttered like her old room had been; it was dubbed the 'Paint Room' which wasn't entirely accurate given how Eleni often used photography as a medium of art.

The wooden floor was warm from the sunlight filtering in through the window, but Eleni's feet were locked under the stool. Her old paintings were propped against the wall, among them, Prema's favorite. She had called it "I can see a world in your eyes" as it was a picture of a large pair of eyes in shape that held a forest and the sea. Eleni couldn't remember what she'd been thinking about at the time, but it was one of her best works, and one of the last before she'd locked away her supplies in favor of studying for her exams.

The painting had started out as something to merely keep her hands busy, since after her parents' death she had a habit of continuously moving her hands; clawing, tapping, digging into her palms. Prema had taken her to a therapist that had suggested something to distract her from tearing up her hands, and Eleni had taken to painting immediately.

She had been downright terrible when she first started, but Prema had kept all her paintings, even the ones little Harry, Parvati, and Padma had destroyed with paint handprints and splotches that had annoyed Eleni at the time but now made her smile fondly.

Green eyes fell to the vast array of colors that she had recently mixed and she contemplated which one to use before deciding on a particular lapis shade of blue, bluer than the sea beyond Villa Mer.

Villa Mer was perched on the edge of a small city in Crete called Kato Zakros. It was beautiful and rural, which had been one of the reasons why Eleni had agreed to it when her siblings had gone through the potential places for them to live, as the Potter family had a number of estates.

Villa Mer was rather large, even she had to agree with that. The kitchen was big enough for them all to cook comfortably in –a long-held Demetriou tradition– and the sitting room was monstrous. Eleni didn't even know how many rooms there were, but there were two guest houses not too far from the main structure.

Eleni had never really considered just how rich her and Harry's parents actually were, but the Potter family was one of the Noble and Most Ancient Houses…however, the Demetriou line and the Hermia line (from which Lily Evans had been a distant descendant) were part of an older group of families that were spoken of reverently in Greece as they were famous for setting up the Magical Government of the Greek Isles.

Suffice to say, the Demetriou name did turn more than a few heads, especially when one bearing it managed to kill a few Erebeals, creatures that hadn't been seen in nearly an age. It made a few people uneasy.

A variety of blues melted into a rough swirl, quickly joined by a few of red, green, and violet. And she continued working on it until well after her arm had begun to ache and her skin was dotted with flecks of paint. Eleni breathed out sharply, smearing a stripe of lavender over her cheek as she withdrew a small athame that she had bought without her mother's approval and kept it hidden where she couldn't see it.

She made a small cut on her finger, just enough to draw a little blood, and she took another paintbrush, this one smaller than the others. Eleni dabbed it into the blood before painting two small intricate letters into one of the right lower corner, an E and a D.

It was Alex's idea, actually, he said it kept her paintings 'authentic'…Eleni had laughed at the time, but she had yet to stop doing it after his suggestion.

Eleni leaned back on her stool, rolling her shoulders to get some feeling back into them before her mirror made a sudden beep.

Like Muggles had mobiles to communicate with each other, an inventor had come up with communicating mirror. Most ones were only two-way, like the one her father had once had, but Eleni's had been given to her by the Department, so it connected very Curse-breaker and Rune Analyst and could be used to connect to others outside of the Department.

It was basically the magical equivalent of a mobile, or as close as one could get.

Hands pulled the compact mirror loose and flipped it open. "Demetriou."

" _Hey, Eleni—"_  It was the Department Coordinator, Samuel Baris, a young man about eighteen who wore his hair in dreadlocks, he was the one responsible for making things run smoothly; there was one for each department of Greece's magical government,  _"—nice look."_

Eleni rolled her eyes for good measure. "Samuel, was there a reason you rang?"

" _Argyrius is having a meeting, all personnel required,"_  he informed her cheerfully.

Interest sparked in Eleni at that. If it was a department-wide meeting then Argyrius probably had a big job, or else he wouldn't bother bringing them all in.

"I'll be there," she said swiftly before shutting the mirror off and setting the painting aside to dry.

* * *

The Magical Government of the Greek Isles didn't particularly have a strict dress code, which was how Eleni could get away with her flowing skirts, like the one she was wearing today with a dark shade of crimson, and her patterned top which exposed about an inch of akin from the hem of shirt to the edge of the skirt.

Everyone gathered was wearing a white lab coat, like the Greek magical Healers (which made them not unlike Muggles in that respect) and were all focused on the Director as he joined them.

"We are working jointly with the Britain Branch of Gringotts' Curse-Breakers—"

Loud complaints followed that announcement and their boss couldn't get anything else out. The Britons and the Greeks were notorious for not getting along, particularly the Curse-Breakers. Greece was home to the most famous Curse-Breakers and the newest innovations, whereas Britain was living in the sixteenth century so to speak.

"Why in the name of the gods would we want to work with those prisses?" demanded Althea Gogola, one of the oldest Curse-breakers in the room at the age of ninety-three. She didn't do much curse-breaking anymore and mostly oversaw everyone else in the department like a supervisor; she showed Eleni, Hypatia, and Beniamin the ropes when they'd first arrived.

"Didn't the last time end in spellfire?" Hypatia piped up from beside Eleni, curling a brown lock around her finger as she sucked on the end of her pen.

One of the male middle-aged Rune Analysts snorted. "And the time before that." He gave Argyrius a flat stare and the older man gave a short sigh.

"I'm well aware of the  _issues_  between our two governments," the Director said, "however, the agreement has already been made. Your groups will work with one Curse-Breaker from Britain, as they don't have as many as we do."

Wasn't that the understatement of the century? And half of the Curse-Breakers weren't worth their salt. Or perhaps Eleni had been listening to Althea a bit too much.

"What exactly is the assignment we're supposed to be corroborating on?" Eleni asked with an arched eyebrow.

"We are looking into the tomb of Nefertiti," Argyrius replied with an air of revealing something of high importance, and it was just that.

Mouths dropped open and splutters of incoherent words echoed.

For many years witches and wizards had sought the Egyptian queen's tomb, particularly since she was one of the few magical ruling parties of ancient times. There was one documented account of a necklace she had made of gold and sunstone that when worn could inspire the truth from others lips, it had earned her the moniker "Truth-Learner." Nefertiti would be the find of the  _century!_

"But there's been no new information regarding Nefertiti for years," Beniamin pointed out, "where do you suggest we start? The Library of Alexandria?"

A ripple of laughter followed his words, quelled only by the glower of the Director.

"There's an interesting thought," Hypatia grinned widely. "Finding a library that's been missing since ancient times."

"An investigation for another time," Argyrius interrupted smoothly.

"We call dibs," Eleni said quickly, gesturing towards her and her team, which was to say Hypatia and Beniamin.

The Department of Curse-Breaking had a competitive environment, but that was how breakthroughs were made, and the whole department shared in the success (Curse-Breaking was, after all, a lucrative occupation). Dibs had to be taken very seriously.

Samuel gave her a thumbs-up, taking note of the choice in a notebook he had open at the seat closest to the Director.

Several before had tried to find the Library of Alexandria, but it had been to little avail, however, finding it would most certainly ensure that the names of those involved went down in history.

Eleni winked towards Beniamin who rolled his eyes for good measure.

"Continuing on," Argyrius said, his steely eyes flitting over them all and calling silence down upon them, "there is no guarantee that we will discover Nefertiti's tomb, but our Minister and the Britain Minister would like to open communications between our department and their branch in Gringotts. If this project goes well, we may find ourselves working with them more often."

Groans filled the air at that comment, and Eleni wasn't sure why he thought that his words would earn a different response, given how well it had gone the last time. Eleni had read the report in the Archives; their respective governments had needed to write a law to keep the hostilities to a minimum.

"That's  _enough!_  You all will be working with one British Curse-Breaker, and that's that…now, Hatzis, Chontos, Andris, and Manella, you have Abram…Petracca, Thoma, Rosso, and Zanni, you have Barrett…"

The list went on for several minutes until Eleni –whose thoughts had been far from the task at hand– jumped slightly at the sudden sound of her name being called.

"Demetriou, Elides, and Makris, you've got Weasley—"

"Weasley? As in Bill Weasley?" Beniamin asked quickly, glancing towards Eleni who smiled in relief. The other two were familiar with the Demetrious old family friends and they'd seen each other a few times. They'd only seen Bill a few times since he as the eldest of the Weasley brood, but Eleni had told them how he'd been accepted into Gringotts as a Curse-Breaker.

The Director consulted his list. "A William Weasley."

"Oh, thank the gods," Hypatia breathed, leaning forward until her forehead was resting on the table. "We won't have to kill our partner."

"I imagine Molly would be very displeased if you killed her firstborn," Eleni commented wryly, leaning her head into her hand and tilting the chair back on its back legs with a bit of disinterest concerning how who could possibly be displaced from it, should she lean too far.

It was turning into a very good day.

* * *

The English wizards weren't due for another few days, which gave the trio a bit more time to work on the artifacts they had unearthed from Brauron, which had become a treasure trove of knowledge and earned them an article in the magazine, Advancements in Curse-Breaking. Having their names printed beside a discovery like Brauron was a dream come true for Eleni, which was probably why she was the one who was smiling the brightest in the moving pictures.

"One of the priestesses is referencing Artemis in nearly every entry in this scroll," Beniamin spoke, looking up from the delicate scroll he had been inspecting closely, "like _'Dear Artemis, here's what happened today.'"_

"Well, it was a temple of Artemis," Hypatia pointed out, "she probably felt obligated to tell the goddess the goings-on in her own temple."

Beniamin grunted an indecipherable noise that neither girl bothered to interpret.

"What're we doing for the twins' birthday?" Hypatia added, swiveling in her chair towards where Eleni was sitting stiffly in her seat, trying not to move too much as she moved her brush carefully over the surface of an ancient jar, removing the dirt that had been caked on with a practiced hand.

"Parv wants Indian and Pads wants Greek so they've been arguing about dinner all week," Eleni said.

The Demetriou family had always loved to cook, and Eleni was sure that was all Prema's fault, as her mother had been a brilliant cook. They had cookbooks from different parts of the world and what Hypatia affectionately called 'Cooking Days' were the most fun, mostly because they'd pick a recipe they didn't know and attempt to cook it.

Eleni remembered one disastrous incident that had caked Harry and the kitchen floor with flour.

But they hadn't had any 'Cooking Days' since their mothers death, mostly because Eleni now had a job that occupied her time and her younger siblings were still in school.

"Harry just wants them to make up their minds," she continued, "he finds it unnerving when they aren't talking to each other…it would be like if Fred and George stopped speaking to each other."

Beniamin snorted at that comparison. "Yeah, but Fred and George are more on the same wave-length than Parvati and Padma…it's like they can read minds, freaky stuff."

"Mind reading?" Hypatia scoffed, rolling her eyes for good measure. "I'm pretty sure the Weasley twins haven't learned Legilimency, forgoing the fact that it's an incredibly intrusive art."

Eleni set down the brush and the air fluttered near her left hand, rolling an old scroll in her direction. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously; there wasn't enough air blowing inside for the scroll to have moved from one end of the table to the other.

The increasingly strange disturbances that were happening around her were becoming more and more frequent. It wasn't as though she was being haunted, she'd checked that first before anything else, but there was a constant presence close to her.

She hefted the scroll delicately between her hands, noticing how it gave a faint glow as if approving of her touch before the glow faded completely. That was a bit odd.

Eleni twisted it in her hands until she came across a name  _Iolanthe Hermia,_  as in from the Hermia family, the line from which Eleni was descended. Her eyes widened in surprise.

The faint glow much have been a seal of sorts that would have kept all but her bloodline from opening the scroll.

And it unrolled easily for Eleni, well preserved by the sands of time.

The parchment was yellowed and of a brittle quality, and some of the words –written in an ancient Greek alphabet that Eleni could easily translate– were worn away, but most of the message was discernible.

 _To She Who Inherits Hope_  was the first line, and Eleni thought that was an odd way to start a scroll.

_The name I was given upon my birth was Iolanthe Hermia, however, you who are reading this will discover that you, like I, have another name, and that is Pandora._

Eleni couldn't stop her eyes from widening at the words, her thoughts flowing quickly to the box she had hidden in the back of her closet

_The Keeper of the Eviles of the World is the duty of those of our line, those descended from the Great Hamadryad Aigeiros who is the closest confidant to our goddess and Lady, Elpis. Elpis entrusted to her many things that she could not entrust to the other gods, even her own siblings, many of whom remain trapped within the pithos with her._

_There have been Good Keepers just as there have been Bad Keepers, but even those allied with the Dark knew better than to release all the Eviles of the World unto the world. Balance is what must be maintained above all things, and within is a power few can control._

_My mother was the first Pandora, the wife of Epimetheus, and it was she who released the Eviles within for a short duration of time before they were returned to the pithos, for the only one with the power to release or return the spirits trapped within is the one who Keeps the pithos._

_After my mother's death, the pithos disappeared and to atone for her opening the pithos, I became a priestess to Lady Artemis, leaving my brother to continue our line as I devoted myself completely to my goddess. I was rewarded with the friendship of the goddess herself who had never found such devotion in a mortal-born before, and she listened to my tale before assuring me that my mother's crime had been already paid for in full._

_Yet still I stayed, for I had found a home in Brauron. Lady Artemis did not visit often, she did not believe in interfering in the lives of others, remarkably unlike her father, Lord Zeus, who is legendary for seducing women and siring children._

_However, I knew danger was not far behind when the pithos that had once haunted each of my mother's movements appeared before me, choosing me as its Keeper. The Erebeals had been silent for too long since Pandora's death, and I knew they would not stop until my blood is shed._

_I will leave tonight while all slumber. May Artemis illuminate my path._

"What's that?" Hypatia asked, noticing her interest and breaking through her thoughts to bring her back to Greece.

"Nothing," Eleni found herself saying, "whoever wrote it must have been greatly confused. None of the sentences make any sense."

Hypatia nodded in understanding, going back to her business as Eleni turned away from her, raking a hand through her hair, effectively tousling it as she breathed out slowly.

Pandora?  _Impossible!_  It was said that the first woman had been created by all the gods together…but in order for Eleni to be related to Aigeiros, the dryad would have had to been the woman's mother…perhaps the myths had gotten it wrong…

* * *

The twins ended up settling on Indian, since their usual foods tended to be of the Greek variety, but everyone in Villa Mer liked Greek, so it wasn't much of an issue.

"It only took you a week to figure out what you wanted," Harry pointed out, a vexed expression on his thin face which pinched into a grimace as the twins elbowed him on either side.  _"Hey!"_

"You're supposed to be nice to us," Parvati said firmly, grinning widely.

"It is our birthday,  _little brother_ ," Padma added, tacking on the last bit for good measure.

Harry pouted as the pair laughed at him before moving towards where his older sister was dicing tomatoes for the prawn curry that the twins had decided on (coincidentally, it was a dish that had once burned the top of her feet when Padma had accidentally spilled it on her).

"Eli, they're terrible!"

"Be nice to your sisters, darling," Eleni hummed, sparing him a small smile. "They only get to tease you like that one day a year."

The dubious expression she received made it clear that he thought she was very wrong about that and they teased him more often than not. But teasing had always been present in the family, though considerably less than was in the Weasley household, but that might have had more to do with them not annoying each other on purpose like the Weasleys did.

"Olympia,  _off!"_

The black cat that had jumped onto the counter at the smell of the prawns simmering over the stove gave a loud meow, rubbing its face against the counter before leaping down, flicking its tail before circling Eleni's ankles and rubbing against her.

Olympia was one of the newest additions to the Demetriou family, and one that their Barred Owl, Atlas, didn't entirely approve of. It had been a few days after Prema's funeral when Eleni had seen her in the window of the menagerie and she'd thought having a cat around might make things a bit better.

Of course, a cat was nothing compared to losing a mother, but the tension in the house eased when a cute cat was introduced to the environment.

Eleni nearly burned her hand when a foreign owl flew in through the window, carrying two letters bound to its leg.

"Harry, watch the food," she ordered, dumping the tomatoes into the pan and ushering the bird out of the kitchen and into the sitting room before it could ruin the food.

It gave an unamused hoot before extending its leg for her to take the letters tied there.

Eleni unbound the letters and the bird flew off with a bit of an arrogant huff that made more sense when Eleni looked at the red wax seal on the letter. It was an H that Eleni remembered from Prema's Hogwarts things.

She flipped the letters to the front, reading the green-inked words.

_Miss P. Patil_

_Villa Mer_

_Kato Zakros, Greece_

The second one was identical to the first.

Prema's husband had been killed in the early stages of the First Wizarding War in Britain, just after she had discovered she was pregnant. After the twins were born, she had their name and hers changed to her maiden name, Demetriou.

It was clear that Hogwarts hadn't gotten the memo.

"Pads, Parv, letters from Hogwarts for you," Eleni called and there was a scramble as two dark-haired blurs barreled towards her. Eleni dropped the letters quickly and made a retreat to the kitchen to relieve Harry of his duty.

"When is my letter going to come?" he asked as she added a few chopped onions to the mixture, stirring with difficulty given how thick it was.

"Either on your birthday or around that time," Eleni supposed. "There's nothing too great about it, Harry, don't worry. It's just got your school supplies list and tells you you've been accepted to the school."

"Are we going shopping with the Weasleys?" Padma piped up, sticking her head around the corner to peer into the kitchen.

"Probably not," Eleni laughed. "The Weasleys tend to wait until the last minute to do their shopping."

The doorbell rang as Eleni turned off the stove and directed the others the set the table as she went to see who was at the door.

She unlatched the door and opened it, blinking in surprise.

Beyond was a woman she'd never seen before. She was slender and beautiful with olive skin that gleamed with a vitality Eleni had not yet seen, her eyes were greener than Eleni's and dark curls fell over her shoulders through which several small red flowers had been threaded, matching the color of the old-fashioned chiton she wore.

The woman was both earthly and unearthly in a manner that captured Eleni's attention immediately.

"May I help you?" she asked.

The woman smiled. "My name is Aigeiros," she said, and her voice was smooth and the words thick as though she was accustomed to speaking another language than English, "daughter of Oxylos and Hamadryas. We must share words, Keeper of the Eviles of the World."

Eleni swallowed with difficulty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Aigeiros so much, and she's such an old-fashioned woman…Elpis may show up in the next chapter, I'm not entirely sure.
> 
> What did you think of Iolanthe's scroll? I realized halfway through writing it that I was going to have to skew the Pandora myth.
> 
> Eleni's style is based off Cosima Niehaus from Orphan Black (which is where Eleni's glasses are from).


	4. Keeper of the Eviles of the World

"What is it?"

Parvati was scrutinizing the blue-wrapped box intently as if wishing she could see through the wrappings to the gift within as her family sat with her in the sitting room.

Padma was sitting beside her on the floor with her own presents to unwrap with a nearly identical blue wrapping, but Harry was slumped on the couch in what Aunt Iva referred to as a food coma. He roused himself slightly when their older sister nudged him with her toe.

Eleni was curled at the end of the couch, her eyebrows creased together even as she feigned being completely interested in what was going on in front of her. It was the same look she'd worn for most of the past year when she was studying hard for her NEWTs (because the Department of Curse-Breaking only took the absolute best and that was what Eleni needed to be) and their mother forced her to eat with them rather than when she was studying. It was an expression that said her thoughts were miles away.

Aunt Iva, on the other hand, was quite animated in the armchair she was sitting in, directly across from the loveseat that Beniamin and Hypatia were lounging on with Hypatia's legs thrown over Beniamin's thighs.

Hypatia's mother gave a smile that brightened her eyes. "Why don't you open it and find out?"

Parvati's excitement faltered slightly and she glanced towards her twin; Padma was picking at the intricate tie on one of her gifts with a forlorn expression.

This would be their first birthday without Mum, and her absence caused an ache in Parvati's heart like an open wound.

The first few days had been terrible; Parvati, Padma, and Harry cried themselves to sleep those nights. They'd stayed with Aunt Iva and Eleni had been gone, trying to gain legal guardianship over the three younger Demetrious.

And then Eleni had to step into their mother's shoes. She had to make sure they had clothes to wear and food to eat, that they went to bed at a proper time and did all their homework, that she punished them if they did something wrong, that they were always cared for.

Sometimes Eleni looked so dead on her feet that the trio let her catch a nap while they finished their homework.

Parvati ripped open the present from Aunt Iva, removing the book with renewed enthusiasm. " _Famous Seers and Oracles of the Ages_? Thanks, Auntie!"

Parvati's new thing was divination, whereas Padma's was Herbology, specifically medical herbalism, which explained Aunt Iva's gift for her,  _Olde Remedies of Greece._

"No problem, dears," Aunt Iva said, smiling as the twins thanked her for the gifts.

Hypatia and Beniamin had gotten Parvati a pack of tarot cards and Padma her own mortar and pestle, but it was Harry and Eleni's gifts they looked forward to the most.

Padma's eyes lit up as she unwrapped the blown glass orb that was made of so many blues that it looked as though it came from the sea.

"You know I don't do blown glass," Eleni spoke up from the couch giving the quieter twin a glance, her lips curling upwards, "but I found this woman in the market who does beautiful blown glass art, but I saw that one and thought it was perfect for you."

She had already gotten the twins necklaces earlier that day. Padma's was a strip of turquoise dangling from a silver chain close to her throat whilst Parvati's was a circular ruby on a golden chain that suited her personality as much as Padma's did hers.

Parvati parted the wrappings to reveal her own gift which was far heavier than Padma's had been, and no less delicate.

It was a crystal ball set atop a curly wrought iron design that Parvati knew Eleni was partial to; it gave the crystal ball an ancient feel.

Others may have considered Divination a soft subject, but Eleni knew better, she knew Divination had once been a very important, especially in Ancient Greece, and if Parvati had a fondness for it, then she wouldn't be one to judge it.

Dark fingers roved over the orb with fascination, eyes focusing on the milky smoke within the sphere.

"It's beautiful," Parvati marveled and Eleni gave her a slightly pained smile that told her that their mother had picked it out. (She was privately glad that her sister didn't mention it in front of Padma, because Mum probably was going to get Padma's gift around the time she'd been killed)

"Thanks, Harry," the girls added towards their olive-skinned younger sibling, both giggling when he gave them two thumbs-ups.

It was nice to get into how things used to be, but Parvati doubted they'd ever really be the same.

"It was a lovely dinner, dear," Aunt Iva said as she helped Eleni package the remnants of the food, placing the sealed bowl in the fridge before running the water in the sink over the used dishes to loosen the food when she washed them later that night.

"Thanks for coming," Eleni added, glancing to where her siblings were sprawled on the floor, focused on their new books.

Harry had his chin propped up on one hand as he read Parvati's book beside her.

"I know hospital hours are hectic," she added, "but it meant a lot to the twins to have you here."

"Of course," Aunt Iva patted Eleni's cheek, an unreadable expression flickering through her eyes. "What's wrong, dear?"

"It's nothing," Eleni said, but her voice rang falsely and it caught Padma's attention from the floor. "Simply a family matter I need to attend to."

Aunt Iva arched an eyebrow, glancing towards the sitting room, but Beniamin and her daughter had disappeared a few moments earlier and the older witch didn't have any doubts that they were involved.

"If that's all," Aunt Iva said instead, trusting in her self-proclaimed niece to keep her head on straight. "Take care of yourself and your brother and sister. If you need me, just mirror-call."

"I promise I will," Eleni said as she embraced the woman, giving her the perfect opportunity to hide her face from view.

* * *

Hypatia was perched on the edge of the window seat of Villa Mer's library as the night darkened outside the window, her leg thrown over the other, leaning forward to rest her loosely crossed arms at the wrist on the knee, one hand gripping her hazel wand in one hand.

Unfortunately for Beniamin, Hypatia had a gift at looking casually beautiful and alluring. Had the circumstances been different, he would have found the position she was sitting in (exposing only a hint of cleavage) very distracting.

But he was more focused on their companion.

He would have mistook her for his other best friend, if not for the fact that Eleni had dyed her hair blonde; it was almost startling how similar they appeared.

Eleni entered the library, shutting the door swiftly behind her, her long skirt fluttering at the movement as she approached.

"Harry and the twins are in bed," she said, her eyes fastening on the woman inspecting the spines of the books on the shelf.

"You have a large number of books on ancient mythology," Aigeiros mused thoughtfully, tilting her head. "I surmise your occupation as Rune Analyst is going well?"

Eleni balked, lips parting in surprise. "How do you know about that?" she asked.

An elegant eyebrow was arched. "I keep an eye on all my descendents…I do not interfere in their affairs, as I have sworn not to, however—"

"Wait, descendent?" Beniamin asked, vaguely startled as he looked between the woman and his friend. "Just who is this, Eli? And why did you want us sticking around?"

Annoyance crossed Eleni's face. "Her name is Aigeiros, Hamadryad to the Black Poplar…and mother of Pandora, isn't that right?"

Aigeiros' eyes glittered as Eleni's friends gaped at that knowledge. "I take it you found my granddaughter's scroll she dictated within until her disappearance from Brauron."

"I did," Eleni said, shifting her weight from one foot to the next. "What became of Iolanthe Hermia?"

Hypatia wasn't familiar with the name, but she was familiar with the family; it was an old line from which Eleni and Harry were born.

"She died," Aigeiros said calmly, "the night she left. And the burden she bore was passed to the daughter of her brother."

"Is this about the box?" Hypatia asked suddenly.

"What box?" Beniamin questioned as Aigeiros turned to fix her eyes on Hypatia's dark ones. Hypatia found it transfixing, the stare that held her, from a face so young to have eyes so old.

"When we were kids…maybe about a year after we met we were digging around in Aunt Prema's yard," Hypatia explained. "We found this box near –near a black poplar tree, actually." She actually remembered thinking how weird it was to have a tree that stretched as high as it did, compared to the trees beside it, and the next time she'd come to Eleni's house, the tree had vanished. Hypatia had been much too young to understand the significance of its disappearance.

"Did you open the box?" The dryad asked.

"No…we couldn't get it to open, could we?" Hypatia looked to Eleni who looked uncomfortable, tugging on a lock of hair with a few fingers. "You did, didn't you? What was inside?"

"Something that would have burned out your eyes and turned your body to ash," Aigeiros answered for Eleni, serious creases forming on her face. "But you've looked, haven't you?" she asked of Eleni.

Eleni straightened her spectacles. "Yes." She saw no reason to lie.

"Tell me, Eleni," Eleni's name curled off her tongue easily but Eleni had to wonder if she'd considered using the name she was born with, Elena, "what do you know of the myth of Pandora's Pithos?"

"It was said to hold the evils of the world," Eleni said without preamble, familiar with the myth, "darkness, plague, and Hope."

"Shall I tell you a story?" Aigeiros hummed, smiling sadly and Eleni wondered how many descendants she had watch die.

"Prometheus was the cause of it all," she said.

"The one who gave fire to mankind?" Beniamin asked, his forehead furrowed in confusion.

"The very same," Aigeiros agreed. "Lord Zeus was angry at how Prometheus stole from the gods, giving flame to mortals, in return he offered to Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus, the first woman, Pandora…but this woman was no mere mortal—"

"She was part god," Hypatia realized.

"Hephaestus was her father," Aigeiros said and Eleni's eyebrows rose (the god of the forge was after all well-known for being a cripple), "and I was her mother. She was crafted from fire and earth into perfection. She grew to womanhood within days, as the gods decreed, and she was given gifts; from Aphrodite, she was given beauty, from Hermes, she was given persuasion, from Apollo she was given music, and from me she was given a love for the earth."

"They took your child," Eleni said stunned, aghast at the actions Aigeiros described. "They took your baby and used her in a revenge plot."

"Yes," Aigeiros sighed. "They did, and the tragedy was that I let them."

Hypatia's eyes widened and Beniamin positively gaped.

"For an instant she was beautifully imperfect as all children are, and then they rewrote her." Eleni noticed her hand clench briefly into a fist and then relax. "But I had no powers to deny gods…and so they gave my daughter to the Titan of Afterthought and a pithos with instructions to not open it…but eventually curiosity overtook Pandora."

"She opened the pithos," Eleni recalled Iolanthe's words, "she released all the evils held in the jar."

"She did," Aigeiros' eyes fixed on hers. "But Elpis remained inside, the Goddess of Hope stayed. Even when Pandora fell to despair, it was Lady Elpis who inspired her and taught her how to return the darkness, how to trap the evils better…Pandora became the pithos, as did each incarnation of the Keeper of the Eviles of the World that followed."

"You're saying a mortal body held all of the world's darkness inside of them?" Beniamin asked a bit dubiously. "But you're talking about plagues and famine and –there's  _no way_  someone could hold spirits as powerful as those…Pandora might've been able to having a god for a father and a dryad for a mother but her descendants wouldn't have managed it."

"You are correct," Aigeiros conceded. "But the ritual the Keeper undergoes in order to prove they can contain the Eviles is…well, it makes the one undergoing the process more dryad than mortal."

"Why is it so important for the Keeper to be a dryad?" Hypatia pressed as Eleni gripped her arm tightly from where they were crossed over her chest.

"Gods are notoriously untrusting creatures," Aigeiros intoned, "they do not trust each other and they do not trust mortals, but there have been many gods that have trusted in naiads and dryads. As the mother of Pandora who ultimately returned the spirits to the pithos, my line is the only one deemed trustworthy enough to keep the pithos. In order to become the Keeper, however, the chosen child undergoes an intense ritual that makes their human traits dormant and their dryad traits active."

Aigeiros glanced towards the blonde-haired witch. "At the moment, you technically are a quarter-hamadryad, as the last Keeper before you was your grandmother, Roslyn Evans."

"How…how does it know?" Eleni asked after a short stint of silence. "How does it know who will be the next…successor?"

A head of dark curls tilted slightly. "That decision falls to the Moirai. They choose the child to bear the burden, a child that is always female."

The Fates chose her…hadn't Eleni suffered enough?

"Excuse me," she said stiffly as she swept out of the room, leaving the other three in silence.

Beniamin and Hypatia shared a long glance.

"Should I speak with her?" Beniamin offered.

"No," Aigeiros released a small sigh, her shoulders sagging, "I suspect I would be the best to share words with her."

She stood swiftly and moved in a graceful manner like a leaf blowing in the wind.

Eleni was found in the sitting room, hunched over in the armchair Aunt Iva had been sitting in hours before, her fingers digging into her golden locks.

"I realize this is not the best time," Aigeiros spoke her words carefully, "but most things do not occur at opportune times."

She saw Eleni's knuckles whiten before she abruptly released her grip on her hair to raise her head, eyes blazing with a fire that could have only come from Hephaestus' forge.

"I have  _siblings_ ," Eleni said heatedly, "what happens to them if your ritual rejects me, hm? They'll be alone and it'll be because I've done something foolish and selfish—"

"No one  _wants_  to be the Keeper of the Eviles of the World," Aigeiros said sadly, "but refusing the call when the pithos has appeared before you, it won't help your family."

Eleni's lips drew into a thin line.

"The Erebeals will be back and they will be back for blood, Eleni," Aigeiros promised.

Eleni's eyes widened. "How do you—?"

"Prema's line was borne of a Nereid by the name of Galene, the scent of the sea was enough to overpower the smell of the earth that both you and your brother possess."

"I don't understand," Eleni frowned, "what does our scent have to do with anything?"

"Oh, my dear, it has to do with everything," Aigeiros assured her. "For Erebeals hunt by smell and it is always the flesh of Pandora that they seek…do you know how Erebeals came into being?"

"No," Eleni said honestly.

Aigeiros gathered the fabric of her skirt gently around her as she nestled herself primly against the cushion of the couch; she looked as though she'd come out of one of those old oil paintings, etched with perfection.

"Within the pithos are a number of spirits," she explained, "Strife, War, Famine, Fear, Plague, and so much more, but most importantly, there was Erebus."

"The god of darkness?" Eleni canted an eyebrow.

"The very same," Aigeiros agreed solemnly, "when he was first released from the pithos, he created his own creatures of darkness, the Erebeals, whose loyalty was to him and him alone…but then he was forcibly returned to the pithos and they were left leaderless and with a desire to kill the one who caused their master's disappearance…over time the Erebeals procreated, creating more of themselves as they died out –these were not beings of immortality– and clashed with the respective Keeper of that generation.

"They knew that the only way to find the pithos would be to kill the dryad guardian, but Pandora was far cleverer than they'd anticipated."

"What do you mean?" Eleni asked, flummoxed but also enthralled by the tales she'd heard since the night began.

"My daughter enchanted the pithos before she became the First Keeper," Aigeiros said, eyes glinting in the dim lighting, "making it so that the pithos would vanish from the host should they die in possession of it…only to reappear for the next Keeper. However, there was one Erebeal who discovered this."

"Wouldn't he be dead, though?" Eleni pointed out. "You said they weren't immortal."

A grimace marred Aigeiros' lips briefly. "I misspoke. Erebus' first born was the only Erebeal exempt from the mortality that plagued his brothers, his name was Athanas, and he was the one that killed your grandmother."

Green eyes widened. "Will he come after me?"

"He may very well go through your siblings to get to you," Aigeiros said grimly, "because you have the same weakness as all the others of your line."

"And what's that?"

"You have a family that you would willingly lay down your life for," Aigeiros breathed. "And he will come for your death whether you have the pithos or not."

Eleni looked exhausted in the lighting.

"It may take them years to find you, perhaps even decades as it was for Roslyn," Aigeiros said, standing in one fluid movement, "but they will come…Perhaps you are the child destined to end the Erebeals once and for all, the One Who Brings Light To Shadow. You have already had several forces act against you even at a young age, yet here you are, reborn from flame."

Their eyes were nearly identical, Eleni noticed when green met green, and then her great- (who knows how many) grandmother had vanished in a flurry of leaves.

* * *

Parvati was swimming farther and deeper than she had gone before, but the Aegean Sea stretched on forever, so it always seemed to have new places to explore, particularly since the seafront of Kato Zakros, for the most part, belonged to the Demetrious (technically just Harry and Eleni, but they tended to overlook that).

The need to breathe wasn't really an issue for them, particularly since Mum had once told them the matriarch of their family tree was a Nereid, a sea nymph (not to be confused with a naiad which was simply a water nymph). Breathing water was quite a bit different than breathing air, it was heavier and it seemed to weigh on her chest the first few minutes she was under, but after that it got a bit easier.

She found Padma on the sea floor, which was to say she was very far down, far enough that anyone else might have damaged their ears (at the very least).

"What'cha looking for?" Parvati asked, her voice coming out in a manner that reverberated and sounded deeper than usual.

"Shells," Padma said with a simple shrug, eyes lighting up as she pulled up a mollusk, inspecting it closely.

Parvati really shouldn't have been surprised. Eleni had finished painting their rooms in time for their birthdays, meaning all she had left was Harry, and he wasn't entirely certain what he wanted yet. Padma's was an image of the calm sea, whereas Parvati's was the sea at sunset (because even though they liked a lot of the same things, Parvati liked to be just different enough from her sister).

Her twin had brought a lot of shells into her room once Eleni had set a few ground rules about swimming (no swimming after dark, no swimming until your schoolwork was all done, no swimming out too far unless you've got a tracking charm on your swimsuit…etc), and Eleni had to buy her a new shelf as a place for her to put them all on.

Padma withdrew a small knife from the waterproof cloth bag slung around her shoulders that had been a gift as well (Parvati had a similar one, but she opted not to use it much) and pried the mollusk open, giving a noise of noise of surprise at what she found within.

It was a black pearl.

Parvati's twin grinned widely. "I'm giving it to Adelfi," Padma declared, safely replacing it in the shell which she then placed carefully in her bag before pushing off of the sea floor, leaving Parvati to follow hastily after her.

When they surfaced Harry was floating on the water on one of those blow up mattresses that were often used in pools (he was so going to get a terrible suntan even with his olive complexion, and Parvati was going to laugh) and Parvati contemplated knocking him off it, but she'd tormented her brother enough that week.

Eleni, on the other hand, was lazing about in the shallows wearing a loose and sheer white shirt over her swimsuit which was a flattering but modest two piece colored green that would have had Fred Weasley gaping (Parvati wasn't stupid; she could see the Weasley twin was mad for her sister).

Darkened lenses were attached to her glasses and she arched her eyebrows above them as the twins splashed towards her.

"Look what we found!" Padma said, her voice and face bright as she dug out the shell and pearl. "Its for you!"

Eleni held up the pearl, no doubt squinting behind her spectacles to test its authenticity perhaps, and then she smiled. "For me? Darling, you're too kind."

Green eyes softened behind her glasses and Padma distantly wondered whose eyes Eleni had inherited hers from, her biological mother or father.

"Shall we see if your brother wants to look for some shells in the shallows?" she asked and both girls brightened, stomping up water to reach their brother. She released a small laugh when Padma unceremoniously rolled him out of the blow-up mattress and into the water, which he rose out of spluttering.

They were happy, the world was peaceful…Eleni would give anything to keep it that way.

"Have you made your decision?"

Aigeiros' sudden voice nearly made her jump as she watched Harry attempt to dunk Padma, but it didn't really work on a girl that could breathe underwater.

The dryad was sitting beside her in the water as if she'd been there all along.

"Yes," she said with certainty, "I have. What do I need to do?"

"Tomorrow," Aigeiros said as Padma rose from the water laughing with Parvati as they tag-teamed against Harry, "meet me at the Moiran Path at Atlas' Folly. You will need nothing other than a willing heart."

Atlas' Folly was the name of a high-reaching mountain that lay within the Hermia lands, one that hadn't been set foot on for centuries…since Villa Mer had last been inhabited. It was said to have been created by Atlas' grip on the sky slipping, dropping it just once and causing the mountain to rise when he strengthened his hold.

_Nothing other than a willing heart? Somehow that wasn't entirely comforting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Pandora's story is a bit of a tragedy, in fact the whole Hermia family seems to be wrought with tragedy.
> 
> I feel like the twins use their ability to breathe underwater against Harry a lot and he finds it incredibly annoying.
> 
> Atlas' Folly was a name that Angelofthelightanddark gave me (one of my darling older sisters), and it works perfectly!
> 
> I'm not sure if I pointed this out before, but since Roslyn was a full-dryad, she looked more Greek, which is why Lily was olive-skinned instead of fair-skinned, and why her children are as well, so Eleni and Harry aren't as pale as say Hope from Looking Beyond.
> 
> Elpis will show up in the next chapter, and I'm so looking forward to it!


	5. Goddess of Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how you all felt about Pandora's story, but I'd known early on that there was going to be a certain amount of tragedy to Eleni and Harry's family, but I think we've dealt with most of it.
> 
> You have no idea how much I want to write the FredxEleni fluff, but there's not going to be much of that for awhile…maybe not until the Greek Trio (Parvati, Padma, and Harry) are in second year…I feel like Fred is giving her space especially since the last boyfriend she had ended up killing her mother.
> 
> I'm really looking forward to when the twins and Harry go to Hogwarts, because that's going to cause some issues, especially since Harry Potter's been missing since the night he was dropped off at the Dursleys (though Dumbledore won't learn of that until he arrives at Hogwarts; for all he knows, Harry's been raised in his aunt's loving household).
> 
> The Weasleys will show up again before September 1, though, because I'd miss them far too much. I think I'll have more of Fred and Eleni being massive dorks for each other around Christmas…that'll be fun to write.

Atlas' Folly was possibly the highest mountain Eleni had ever seen, though she had to admit that there weren't many mountains she'd seen in her short life, but she doubted many reached as high as Atlas' Folly. It seemed to stretch all the way from the ground up into the clouds, but she knew that even if it was tall, it wasn't nearly that tall.

But Eleni couldn't help but swallow thickly at the sight of it. It was much larger in person in comparison to its image in a book. And the ominous graying clouds above weren't doing anything to detract from its eerie appearance.

The Moiran Path, which was where Aigeiros had told Eleni to meet her, was the only known path up the mountain, but, again, few had set foot on it for centuries. Some called it the Path of Fate, which was appropriate, considering it had been named after the Moirai, the Fates.

The path in question had been overgrown by earth. Flowers, grass, and trees had sprouted over the years. One tree twisted as she came closer, shifting until it took the shape of a young woman.

Aigeiros was now wearing a green toga the same color her leaves had been, which was ironically the same color as the shirt Eleni had elected to wear that day.

"Good, you are here," the dryad spared her a slight smile before gesturing up at the peak of the mountain that Eleni could just barely see. "Maera's Summit is where you will find what you seek."

Eleni expelled a fairly audible sigh, her shoulders sagging just slightly. "I suppose using magic to reach the top is out of the question," she uttered dryly.

"Indeed, Granddaughter," Aigeiros mused, eyes twinkling like stars on her face. "We await you at the peak." And then she vanished into leaves once more, leaving Eleni on her own.

The 'we' did not escape Eleni's notice and apprehension filled her. There had been no hint of the gods on the mortal earth for centuries, if not millenniums, the idea that some form of Elpis, the goddess of hope, remained, awaiting her at the top of the mountain…it was… _terrifying._

Eleni's throat felt dry at the merest idea. What if she was a disappointment? What if they got it wrong and Eleni was simply meant to sire the next Keeper? What if she wasn't ready? What if…?

There was so much indecision and unease running through her mind that she contemplated turning back. That would be simpler; no gods or ancient spirits locked away in a jar to torment her.

But Eleni knew there had been a truth to Aigeiros' words about how it would not matter whether or not she took the burden, the Erebeals would still come for her, come for her and her brother, the last of the Hermia line…and if Padma and Parvati stood in their way, not even they would be spared.

Green eyes blinked furiously as Eleni imagined Harry as her mother had been; splayed out and soaked in crimson, eyes open –blank and unseeing–, chest no longer moving as the heart within no longer beat. Padma slumped and cold to the touch. Parvati painted crimson, red staining her lips.

Her breath caught in her throat at the imagery her mind had created before she savagely pushed it away.

 _That was_ never  _going to happen._

And she took one step and then another, climbing the path slowly but surely.

It was exhausting work, and Eleni had to admit that she needed to rest several times before continuing on her way. Eleni's strength was in her upper body, not her lower, undoubtedly from all of the archery training she had done over the years.

"Not need anything, my  _arse_ ," she muttered to herself as she reached a short cliff, bracing her hands against her knees as she struggled to regain her breathing. "I don't have the lower body strength needed for this!"

Of course, silence followed her words.

A loud sigh was expelled from her lips as she straightened up once more, looking up to the mountain's peak. It seemed like she still had so far to go.

"This is going to take an  _age,_ " Eleni mumbled to herself as she began again. "I should have brought some water."

But Aigeiros had said to bring nothing, so Eleni had brought nothing. Her black poplar wand remained at her bedside. Her bow remained propped against the wall of her bedroom.

The twins and Harry were being watched by Beniamin and Hypatia who were under the impression that she'd been called in to work on their day off. Eleni hadn't wanted to tell them what she was really doing, as she was sure they would have been against it, if their protests once Aigeiros had gone were any indication of how they felt about it.

Of course, her siblings had no idea about anything. Eleni was trying to keep them as far from the issue as possible, or, at least as much as she could manage.

There was no way she could lie about why their mother had really been killed to them, especially to Harry who shared the same bloodline as Eleni. She was going to tell them…after today, she would tell them…if the ritual didn't kill her first.

Aigeiros had skated over that issue, but it still left Eleni uneasy, even as she went further and further up the mountain, unaware that someone was steadily following the tracks she'd left behind.

The sky had opened above the mountain, sprinkling downwards and peppering Eleni's clothes with wet splotches that grew in size as the rain continued.

She tripped over her heel and nearly threw herself to the ground, only saving face by managing to grasp a hold on a stray tree branch.

But she had reached the summit at long last.

The rain had soaked her hair completely and her clothes were a close second as she stood there in the downpour, tilting her face up to the sky, letting the rain patter against her face.

And then her eyes fell to the cave that sat at the summit that must have been where Aigeiros was awaiting her and Eleni took one step, and then another, passing through the gaping opening.

The first thing that registered to her mind was that the cave was chilly, but that might've had more to do with the fact that the cool air was combining with her sopping wet body and it really didn't help.

The next thing she noticed was that it was dark, but not completely dark, the light from the candles was soft and cast an orange glow upon the cavern.

"Enjoying the weather, Granddaughter?"

Aigeiros' sudden voice made Eleni jump and twist in her direction and the dryad gave her a small smirk which earned a deadpanned expression in return.

"Oh, absolutely," Eleni intoned dryly, "this is just the way I wanted to spend my day off; soaked to the bone."

A small laugh left the dryad's lips at her words. "Come," she said, extending a hand to Eleni who eyed it cautiously, "someone wants to meet you."

Eleni raised her hand tentatively, half-considering not taking it before she grasped her family's matriarch's hand. The hand was warm, like a tree that stood in direct sunlight, soaking up the sun. Eleni wasn't sure why, but she'd been expecting her ancestor's skin to be cold to the touch…like a corpse…Eleni flinched at the thought.

If Aigeiros saw the flinch, she made no mention of it, pulling her further into the cave with a gentle hand.

The green-eyed witch hadn't been to many caves in her life, but it seemed to her that this cave in particular was quite large. The number of lit candles grew as they descended the roughly carved stone path that was man-made but clearly rarely used.

Eleni tried her hardest not to slip before the path leveled off into a circular area that was by far the least illuminated of the cave.

"My Lady," Aigeiros bowed lowly, dragging Eleni into a similar position before straightening once more, "this is my granddaughter, Eleni Lily Demetriou."

The girl blinked at the use of her middle name, and consequently her mother's name, and then her eyes fixed ahead as a figure came out of the darkness.

She saw the pure white chiton first before they came into view entirely.

This was the goddess Elpis, for Eleni had never seen someone so unearthly in their beauty.

Elpis bore the form of a young girl at perhaps Ginny's age, but her eyes were a pure gold that glowed eerily, making it clear just how inhuman she was, and her soft brown hair was swept upwards into a complicated twist. Eleni was certain if she was older she would look nearly identical to a few of the old statues that the ancient Greeks had sculpted in the likeness of the gods.

In the darkness, she shone with a faint glow similar to that that her eyes held.

"Eleni," the girl spoke with a voice that was like a whisper on the wind, an echo in a cave, and leaves rustling as they were blown free from their branch, all in one. "I am Elpis."

"H-Hello." Eleni's voice failed her only slightly as she looked upon the goddess.

"I am…not what you expected?" Elpis guessed, golden eyes crinkling as she tilted her head and smiled.

"I thought you'd be…older," Eleni couldn't help but admit, still gazing at her in complete fascination that made Aigeiros stifle her amusement.

"That is the common misconception," Elpis said, sounding as amused as the dryad beside Eleni. "But immortal beings such as I can appear however we wish…such as a cloud, a tree, a man, a woman, or ever—" She gestured down at her child-like body. "—a child."

"…I see." Eleni remembered the story of how Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, was conceived when his father came to his mother in a shower of gold.

She was startled a moment later when the goddess' form flickered and faded for a moment only to return once more.

"Forgive me," she said, her smile brittle, "maintaining my form for so long outside the pithos is difficult for me."

"You're still inside the jar?" Eleni asked, which was probably a stupid question, going off the look she received in return.

"I always remain within the pithos, my dear," the girl said. "And we have come to your reason for being here."

Eleni straightened her back unconsciously as Aigeiros left them to their private conversation, an approaching figure garnering her attention.

No words parted from Eleni's lips for the longest moment, but then she spoke.

"The Erebeals killed my mother," she said.

"I'm aware," Elpis said.

"They killed her because of my bloodline, even if I wasn't aware of it," Eleni blazed on.

"Yes," Elpis agreed, "they did. Erebeals have no notion of love or even self-preservation. They only care about killing in the hope that their master will return…Alexander manipulated you from the day you met."

Eleni bit down on the inside of her cheek as her throat clogged at the mention of her ex-boyfriend.

"We—we were both kids once," she managed to force out, "how…how could he—?"

The words became tangled in her throat.

"The boy is rather like you, one would say," Elpis said, taking a few steps towards her, but not close enough that she infringed on Eleni's space. "He was born from an old line of Erebeals, stretching back to the first. His family was entrenched in darkness from the very start, but the difference was he allowed himself to be strangled by it. He allowed it to seduce him and lead him astray, a stark contrast to your destiny."

Eleni thought about every time Alex had smiled at her in a way that made his eyes light up, or how he'd catch her hand when they walked together, their shoulders bumping together…how could it all have been a lie?

"My…destiny?" Her head felt heavy, weighed down by the thought that Alex had been lying to all of them for years.

"You, Eleni, child of earth and Death himself are the thing the Erebeals fear the most." Elpis' eyes glittered pure and golden in the darkness. "You are their Downfall, the monster in the closet to Erebeals…and they have been waiting for you for a long time."

Eleni barely understood. "Downfall?" she asked in confusion.

"Indeed," Elpis agreed. "Killing you would ensure that there was no true opposing force equal to Athanas in strength."

"Strength?" Eleni goggled at her. "But I'm not strong like how you think…I'm—I'm—" She was floundering and lost.

Strength had never been her forte, intelligence, sure, but not strength. She was rather terrible at sports, which was why it was so surprising that she did so well in archery.

"Strength in magic, young one," Elpis corrected mildly, no doubt guessing where her mind had gone to. "In many ways you will find that strength in magic supersedes that of physical strength."

The ability to formulate a response had left Eleni completely.

"Speak plainly, Eleni," Elpis said, her words just shy of a command. "What is it that's bothering you?"

"This whole thing!" Eleni burst out, unable to stop herself. "You and Aigeiros are both talking about this destiny, the great destiny that I've got, that people have been prophesying my birth for eons, but I'm just me! I'm just… _me…"_

Golden eyes surveyed her calmly throughout her rant, awaiting silence to speak.

"Do you think that it was chance that the Fates chose you for this burden?" Elpis asked her, canting her head slightly to the side in a manner that Eleni recognized as her own (eerily replicated, if she had to say so herself). "No, it was not. Each Keeper was chosen long before their lives began, some only for a short period of time, others for years upon years. The experiences they each went through made them the prime choices for Keeper, just as your experiences made it impossible to choose anyone else."

Eleni blinked furiously, clenching her teeth behind her lips. "You're saying—you're saying that my parents, my mother…they were  _meant_  to die?"

It was a sickening though, one Eleni would prefer not to think about, if she was being completely honest. What kind of destiny was a good one if you had to lose the people you loved for the destiny to begin?

"Many things are foretold in the stars," Elpis told her, speaking quietly and gently as if anything at a higher level would set her off. "Fortune-telling has never been one of my skills; I leave it to the Moirai to foretell the fate of the world. Perhaps they were meant to die, perhaps they were not…many things do not happen according to the Fates decree…it is what happens when foreknowledge is used."

A hand was lifted to rub at Eleni's eyes, and the witch was sure she was the picture of exhaustion, but it also gave her the opportunity to rub away the moisture that had formed at her eyes.

"I'm not even fourteen yet!" Eleni said finally. "How can I be this –this person you think I am?"

Elpis raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Many heroes of old were younger than you; age is no accounting for destiny."

The more she talked about destiny, the more Eleni wanted to rattle her by the shoulders. Elpis must have picked up the stray thought, because she smirked and Eleni couldn't help but flush.

"We do not choose our destiny, but we can certainly shape it," the goddess continued, "after all, from what Aigeiros has said, you do not want to be the next Keeper…yet here you are."

"I'm not doing this for myself!" Eleni snapped.

"Few of her descendents ever did," Elpis said, surprising Eleni, who had to take a step back and blink for good measure. "I find I prefer it if my Keepers have a certain quality."

"What quality?"

Gold met green. "Selflessness. The greatest Keepers are the ones who took the burden to protect someone else from harm."

Eleni opened her mouth to speak, to refute and deny, but the words refused to part from her.

"If you wish to keep your family safe, take this burden," Elpis implored, "take all the darkness and evile the world has to offer, but do not let it consume you, do not give in to its power. Without light there cannot be darkness, just as without darkness there cannot be light."

"But how can someone hold all that and remain unaffected?" Eleni's fingers twisted together as she wrung them.

"They cannot," Elpis replied. "However, they can use the spirits within them to their advantage, for those spirits can cause devastation, which is why the Erebeals wish for them so badly…it is how a Keeper can match Athanas in strength…all that remains of you is the ritual you must complete."

Eleni scuffed her boot against the floor of the cave. "And what's the ritual involve?"

"Very little," Elpis said in a way that made Eleni instantly suspicious, "but the period of time it takes to situate the spirits within you can be prolonged and very painful as they originally rebel against their host."

"Sounds like fun," Eleni muttered dryly.

"Roslyn described it as being similar to being ripped apart and put back together."

Eleni went positively white at the thought. And then she thought about her mother smeared with red, hand clutching her dagger tightly, the wand too far away to grab.

Elpis held out her hands, and after a moment Eleni took them.

"We will speak again, daughter of the earth," Elpis mused as their joined hands glowed brightly as if from the light of the sun and then something fiery hot was racing across her skin, sinking deep into her body.

Eleni wrenched her hands away from the goddess who faded suddenly to wrap her arms around herself as she fell to her knees, a scream ripping from her lips.

It was as though her blood was boiling beneath her skin, or that she was being run through by white-hot pokers.

She was shaking and screaming on the ground, cuts appearing on her body, blood staining her skin like the spirits she had just been given were trying to claw their way out of her.

Eleni had never felt a pain like the one she still felt. She didn't know how long it went on, only that it did for quite some time. Only when it had stopped did she realize how warm and sticky she was from the blood and heavy and cold from the blood loss.

"Eli!  _Eli!"_

She could barely hear her friend's voice, barely make her out as Hypatia leapt down to reach her side.

"Oh, gods, Eli!" She could hear the fear in her voice, but not much else.  _"What've you done?"_

Eleni couldn't have moved her lips to respond even if she wanted to and her eyes fluttered closed, darkness claiming her, and that phrase had never seemed more fitting.

* * *

"What do you think of her?"

An eyebrow arched in amusement as they watched the newest Keeper's friend magic her onto a stretcher, taking her unmoving form from the mountain, speaking feverishly into a small mirror.

"I think Eleni Demetriou has potential far greater than I have yet seen," Elpis mused thoughtfully. "Even if she doesn't yet see it."

"She will soon," Aigeiros said, watching as Eleni's friend apparated with her to the base of the mountain before a second figure joined them, the healer, Iva. "The Erebeals are banding together like they did in the old days. In a matter of years there will be an uprising."

"Yes," Elpis said in a tone of contemplation. "She will need training in wielding the earth magic you share, that will be your duty."

"Of course, My Lady."

"I will teach her of the spirits she possesses," Elpis continued, her form flickering and fading once more before returning with a fainter image than before. "But now I must sleep. Maintaining my form outside of the pithos for so long is draining my spirit."

Aigeiros bowed her head as her lady vanished from the physical plane to return to her new host who slept fitfully as her wounds healed and the winding soft brown markings faded away.

A new day was dawning for Eleni Demetriou, she just didn't know it yet.

She knew nothing of fear her siblings held once they caught sight of her limp form, nor the demands of Beniamin when Hypatia returned with her friend and mother in tow. She didn't even know of the residual pain that throbbed across her body with every jarring move.

The only thing Eleni knew of was the multitude of figures whom she found herself in the presence of, each with every different expressions and features that it couldn't have been made plainer to her that they were each very different from the other.

The Keeper had been chosen, now the battle of wills would begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, moral of the chapter? Don't try to take on the Eviles of the World, it's not everyone's cup of tea. The way I did Eleni's taking on the Eviles is actually similar to Yusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho (if you're familiar with the manga) when he received the Spirit Wave.
> 
> In giving the spirits to Eleni, Elpis made her more dryad than mortal, which is why the spirits could rip through her, because she still has some mortal qualities, but they won't be able to leave their host unless by her leave.
> 
> The next chapter will deal mostly with Eleni coming to terms with all the spirits she is now a host of, which means a majority of the chapter will be done in her head, I think, and involve a few trips down memory lane, I think.
> 
> Basically, there will be some answers to some questions and even more questions left unanswered, and Eleni will meet the individual spirits she houses.


	6. Spirits of the Pithos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Elpis is an interesting character, right? I love her and Aigeiros a lot, and I love the character that I'm going to be introducing in this chapter, one of many whom Eleni will meet over the course of her tenure as Keeper.
> 
> Since Bea asked: Athanas is a Greek name that means immortal, which suits the character that I created, since he is in fact immortal, though he can be killed, he has not yet been.
> 
> And Bea also asked about the black pearl the twins gave Eleni: it wasn't really meant to be symbolic, though the color symbolizes wealth and prosperity and the pearl itself symbolizes wisdom gained through experience. But its also worn as a lucky charm to ward off negative energy and evil spirits, so its unintentionally symbolic I suppose…

Eleni's eyelids fluttered, and she groaned as she opened them fully, squinting in the relative darkness. Even though it was dark, she didn't seem to have trouble seeing. She lifted a hand to her face as she pulled herself into a standing position; her sight was clear but her glasses were gone…odd…

Then she looked down at herself and balked. The last thing she remembered wearing was a shirt with jeans, definitely not a pure white chiton. White had never been one of her favorite colors; it was bright and drew a lot of attention (though Eleni's style drew eyes enough as it was).

"What in the—?"

"Awake, are you?"

The rough and unfamiliar voice startled Eleni more than she would care to admit and she twisted around, loose blonde locks flying.

A laugh followed her response and Eleni automatically flushed as she took in the person that had spoken.

Her hair was a wispy grey and her eyes completely white and her chiton was ripped and worn with age. She was terrifying and beautiful.

"Who are you?" she couldn't help but ask, gazing at the woman in fascination.

She earned a stiff smile in return. "I am Achlys, spirit of the death-mist, the personification of sadness and misery."

Eleni stared at her unblinkingly.

"I am one of twenty-one spirits that you now house," Achlys said, surveying her with vague interest.

"Twenty-one?" Eleni couldn't help but ask in surprise. "That many?"

"Does that surprise you?" Achlys queried.

"Yes," Eleni said honestly, eyes searching the darkness for something that couldn't be seen. "Who all is here?"

Achlys ticked off the spirits and gods and goddesses on her alabaster fingers. "Erebus, Nyx, myself, Adikia, Apate, Arae, Atë, Deimos, Aidos, Elpis, Eris, Enyo, Keres, Lyssa, Mania, Moros, Oizys, Odyne, Indivia, the Erinyes, and Phobos."

Eleni stared at her open-mouthed as she named each of the spirits contained.

"I assume you're at least familiar with one of those spirits," Achlys said innocently.

"I might need to sit down," Eleni said, more to herself than to spirit standing before her and before she had time to even think, a chair had formed behind her and she sat down hard.

"It might seem a bit overwhelming, but you will get used to it," Achlys said with a certain degree of conviction.

"How can you be sure?" Eleni moaned, leaning forward against her knees, knotting her fingers in her hair, feeling the onset of a throbbing headache.

"Many have undergone this process before you," Achlys said simply, "and many will undergo it after you."

Eleni lifted her head to look upon the spirit, scrutinizing her intently. "You aren't what I expected," she admitted.

"In what aspect?"

"I thought you'd be…harsher," Eleni said honestly. "You are one of the spirits in the pithos…shouldn't you be…darker?"

An amused smile lit Achlys' lips. "I am the personification of misery and woe, Eleni Demetriou, darkness is Erebus' domain, not mine."

"Shouldn't there be more of you?" Eleni asked, looking around but all she could see was blackness with no hint of any other spirits around them.

"Oh, there are," Achlys assured her. "But they will keep their distance…the first meeting is always the most startling for the Keeper."

That threw Eleni through a loop.

"So…you're kind of a meet-and-greet spirit?"

"If that's the easiest to understand," Achlys responded easily. "Since I'm the spirit that you most identify with, I'm the one to greet you."

"Most identify with?" Eleni repeated.

Achlys did not say anything, merely gesturing Eleni forward into the darkness, for what reason, Eleni couldn't be sure, and it only became obvious when the darkness lightened to form a very familiar place.

Eleni's heart dropped straight down into her stomach and she went positively white as she saw the scene that had haunted her nightmares since the day her mother had died.

"I'd like to leave now," she said suddenly, breath coming up short, " _please."_

The plea in her voice couldn't have been missed.

"The Keeper must first overcome their own darkness if they wish to keep themselves distant from the darkness they now hold," Achlys told her simply, pure white eyes focusing intently on her. "You're feeling of loss is so great that some days you feel as though you are drowning, but you put on a brave face for your family…so they won't see how guilty you feel…"

Eleni flinched at the accurate assumption.

"Most of your negative feelings come from the day your mother was murdered, but you must come to terms with that if you wish to move forward with your life."

She was worse than a therapist, but she wasn't wrong.

Eleni sucked in her lower lip, breathing in sharply as she looked upon the scene.

She'd been late getting back from her last day, waiting with Beniamin and Hypatia to get their NEWT results early, but Alex had left right after their last exam, which happened to be Charms.

Eleni had been excited to tell her mother just how well she'd done and she'd taken her bike home, rushing into the house with a bright smile on her face, and that was where the memory began.

_She entered the house, green eyes bright behind her glasses and dark hair swinging in her high ponytail._

" _Mum? Are you home?" she called as she locked the door behind her, the smile falling from her face it the sight of the photographs knocked to the ground and the burns on the walls that were the tell-tale sign of spellfire. "Mum?"_

_She rushed up the stairs, a scream ripped from her throat at the sight of what lay there._

_Her mother, her beautiful mother, was splayed on the ground, still wearing her Healer's uniform that was stained red as she choked for breath, the fingers of one hand weakly attempting to stem the flow of blood that was seeping through, while the other clutching her dagger, one that had rested on the wall, an ancestral gift that had been passed down through her family for generations._

_But the figure standing over her holding a sleek knife of his own was the one that stopped Eleni where she was._

_There was no mistaking him, with that head of coarse, dark hair and those eyes that were a brown so dark they were closer to black than brown._

_Eleni had looked into the eyes of Alexander Pallas more times than she would care to admit, but she had never seen him with a look like the one he was wearing, one of pure hate, identical to the expression of the two men with him._

_And 'men' was a loosely used term, because their eyes were like black holes, empty and unfeeling, hair dark and wild, and face pale with veins of black tracing from their eyes down over their skin, disappearing down the neckline of their robes._

_Eleni had never seen anything quite so terrifying and she couldn't stop the scream that ripped from her throat as she lunged for her bow and quiver, resting against the wall, the arrows falling over the ground as she grabbed at them._

_The first arrow collided with one of the Erebeals' chests, and he became nothing more than a pile of ash, the second went through the other Erebeal's stomach before she turned on Alex, not even giving him a chance._

_His spell hit her the second her arrow met his shoulder and his sent her crashing into the wall and Eleni's sight faded to black._

Eleni's hands were shaking in clenched fists as the image faded from before them and she quickly wiped tears that had tracked down her cheeks.

"Your mother was alive, and when you awoke, she was dead," Achlys said matter-of-factly. "I presume that weighs on you."

Eleni glared at her, and the red around her eyes didn't help.

"Prema Demetriou died to keep you safe," Achlys spoke gently now, "just like your parents—"

"Don't talk about my parents," Eleni interjected suddenly, her teeth gritting together and her eyes shining with suppressed tears. "Don't you  _dare—!"_

Her memories of her biological parents were few in number, but still greater than Harry's by far. She remembered how Lily danced around the kitchen, singing as she cooked, and how James would grin widely as he swung he up into the air…she remembered so much, and in a way that was a curse.

No one wanted to remember being locked in a room and hearing the last words of her parents, no one wanted to remember choking for air as the fire caught and smoke filled the air.

"Eleni…" Achlys' eyes seemed almost soft, but they were completely white. "You are determined to blame yourself for the loss of your family, when in truth the best kinds of parents are the ones that would willingly give their lives for their children."

Eleni bit down on the inside of her cheeks, blinking furiously. "But they shouldn't have had to!"

And then, for the first time in what seemed like years, Eleni broke down entirely. She sank to the ground, her hands pressing against her face, her shoulders shaking and tears staining her cheeks.

Every adult she had ever called a parent had died.

Achlys stood over her, waiting for her to calm herself, to regain her control. It was difficult to watch and the spirit wondered if Eleni had even had the opportunity to properly grieve.

"I'm so tired of losing people I care about!" Eleni managed to force out between hiccupping sobs. "And I'm tired of being the reason people die!"

And she dissolved into tears once more, crying for all that she was worth, wrapping her arms around her own waist as she shook.

* * *

"I want an explanation,  _now!"_

Iva was glaring at her daughter who quailed and Beniamin who shifted uncomfortably as she fixed them with a penetrating stare.

Beniamin was an orphan who had been sponsored as a child which was the only reason he'd been able to attend Athene Academy, he'd never known his parents, but he never wanted to cross Iva Eliades on a bad day.

And this _definitely_ counted as a bad day.

Worry and fear was clear and obvious on the youngest three, and that was the thing that got to Beniamin the most. Because Harry, Parvati, and Padma had no idea what had happened, they only knew that their sister had been levitated back to the house covered in blood.

Even now, it didn't look good.

"Severe lacerations that keep reopening like venomous snake bites that require Blood Replenishers every half hour." Iva's eyes were steely. "Explain, now!"

"She said she was going into work," Beniamin stumbled over his words.

"I thought we'd convinced her not to listen to the dryad," Hypatia continued.

"Dryad?" Iva's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and she wasn't the only one, Harry and the twins were completely lost. "What dryad?"

"That would be me."

Several heads whipped around to look at the newest figure who had not been there a moment previously.

Aigeiros stood with her green eyes glinting and dark curls hiked up into a loose bun looking as usual, as though she already knew anything that needed to be known.

Iva's wand was in her hand and aimed at the dryad faster than Hypatia could ever remember her mother moving.

"How did you get in here?" Iva questioned, positioning her body so that she was protectively shielding the younger witches and wizards. "There are wards set up around this entire premise to keep out intruders."

"Yeah…" Beniamin muttered. "She's not great with boundaries."

Hypatia elbowed her boyfriend in the side.

"The wards are designed with the basis of keeping out humans," Aigeiros said, arching an eyebrow, lifting her hands in the universal gesture for surrender. "Dryads fall outside human, not by much, but enough to be notable."

"There aren't very many full-blooded dryads left in this world," Iva remarked with narrowed eyes.

"There are not," Aigeiros agreed, looking around the defensive woman to where the children were watching her intently. "You must be Harry, Parvati, and Padma."

The three started at how she had known their names even though they had never met before.

Padma ducked behind Parvati and the older twin leaned her shoulder against Harry's the two creating a wall. Padma was the quietest of the three and ten years as siblings had Harry and Parvati had long since learned to act as a protective barrier.

"How does she know our names?" Padma whispered, peering over their shoulders, brown eyes wide.

"You may think of me as the grandmother of Eleni and Harry," Aigeiros said, her eyes sweeping over to Padma who ducked quickly, and the dryad's lips twisted upwards in amusement. "But I am farther back on the Hermia family line; I am the family's matriarch."

"And I suppose it was just a coincidence that you happened to show up when my niece is dying?" Iva spoke with a touch of dry sarcasm but was mostly full of tension.

Aigeiros actually laughed at that comment, as if the very idea of Eleni dying was humorous. "Oh, don't worry, she's not dying. Her mortal blood is simply being replaced by that of a dryad."

"You gave her blood?" Hypatia asked dubiously.

"Of course not, it's her own blood, purified to that of a full-blooded dryad," Aigeiros uttered dryly.

"Eli's a dryad now?" Parvati asked in complete confusion, and it was an expression that the younger ones shared, though the older ones seemed to have garnered what had happened.

Harry wrinkled his forehead in confusion, the scar there rippling just slightly from the move.

"Where's the pithos?" Beniamin blurted.

"She's unconscious right now, maybe tomorrow you'll have better luck."

Iva's eyebrows rose so high on her forehead that they disappeared under the line of her fringe, but Harry and Parvati were still lost.

"They're talking about a jar?" Harry asked Parvati out of the corner of his mouth, flummoxed.

"Pandora's Pithos, probably," Padma said, resting her chin on their shoulders. "It's the most famous pithos in Greece."

The other two turned around to survey their other sibling who spent most of her time with her nose in a book of some form.

"The Pandora's Pithos?" Parvati asked incredulously. "The pithos that held all the evils of the world?"

The Demetriou siblings were familiar with a variety of myths, mostly the famous ones concerning the Olympian gods, but Padma knew more about the minor myths, like Eleni.

Padma shrugged. "Can't think of any other pithos they could be talking about…"

"You turned her into a  _vessel,"_  Hypatia realized, ignoring the side conversation from the younger three. "How could you do that?"

"Those to whom the pithos is gifted  _become_ the pithos," Aigeiros explained patiently, "that is how it has always been. The only way to protect the spirits within the pithos is to keep them within a host. Eleni was in far more danger as she was before, without the spirits of the pithos to protect her. Would you prefer your friend to be dead?"

"No, of course not!" Hypatia responded, a bit stung.

"Perhaps we should move this conversation?" Aigeiros offered, glancing towards Harry, Padma, and Parvati.

"Yes, we should," Iva agreed with narrowed eyes, "you three, keep an eye on your sister and come get me when she starts bleeding through her bandages…" She glared at the unperturbed dryad. " _Again."_

* * *

Eleni felt numb as she straightened herself where she was kneeling, wiping the remnants of her dried tears from her already raw cheeks. Her breaths were ragged and choked, even as she calmed herself.

Achlys hovered over her, not quite knowing what to say or do, simply opting to wait for her to calm down completely.

The blonde-haired girl pinched the bridge of her nose before she plopped herself onto her back, looking up into the endless darkness.

Others might have considered the blackness oppressive, especially since the only things that Eleni could see was herself and Achlys.

"My mother pulled me from a burning house," she said finally, "the same house that my parents died in. She stepped over my father's corpse and she saw my mother's body before she dragged me out…she risked being burned alive to save me."

"I know," Achlys said calmly.

"She never stopped saving my life," Eleni muttered under her breath. "I want to hate her for it, I want to hate her so much—"

"But you can't," the spirit returned, "because you loved Prema Demetriou and no matter how much pain you feel from losing her, that will never change. She died so that you and your siblings could live. She died to keep you safe, and none of that was your fault."

Eleni blinked furiously. "I had my wand," she said throatily after a moment of trying to keep her grief controlled. "I could have used my wand on them…I could have saved her."

"Prema was dying when you came across her," Achlys corrected firmly. "There was nothing you could have done. Wand magic has very little effect on Erebeals, but a bow in the hands of one of Pandora's descendents is positively lethal."

The spirit's hand was cold on her arm as she touched Eleni gently.

"You did very well, Eleni, and there is no one to blame than the one who ran your mother through with the dagger."

Eleni shut her eyes, trying not to think of the boy that she used to whisper about with Hypatia or make 'googly eyes' as Parvati said at when his back was turned.

How could she not have seen the evil he would do?

And then Eleni was floating away as though she'd never been in the blackness to start with.

* * *

By the next day, Eleni still had not awakened. Aunt Iva had to forcibly remove Harry and the twins from her bedside in order to send them to school, but Beniamin and Hypatia took the day off to keep an eye on her, spreading the rumor at work that she was in the hospital from a bad fall.

In reality, they had no idea what to do. Eleni had long since stopped bleeding and they'd been able to remove the bandages that had been wrapped around her body, giving her the appearance of a mummy. The cuts had faded away until they disappeared completely and it seemed that her blood pressure was back to normal.

"Do you think Eli can hear us?" Harry asked once they'd finished school and returned to Eleni's room to keep her company, even though she wasn't aware of them.

"I read a Healer's journal a few weeks ago about a comatose patient that could hear what was going on around him while he was sleeping," Padma offered, doing her history essay on a heavy tome on Ancient Egypt that Eleni had left lying around. "So…maybe?"

"Eleni, you need to wake up," Parvati said, taking the incentive, "Harry and Pads are driving me insane and Aunt Iva's gone off the deep end…she wants to feed us to the  _sharks_ , Eli! You can't let us be thrown to the  _sharks!"_

Harry rolled his eyes and Padma snorted.

Eleni gave no response and no indication that she had heard a word that was said.

Parvati deflated. "Well, it was worth a shot, I guess…"

"What d'you think about the whole dryad thing?" Harry asked, tugging at the fringe over his lightning bolt scar.

"Its legit," Padma said with a shrug, "Aunt Iva checked her blood, she's a full-blooded dryad now, which just means she probably heals faster and her magic is stronger."

"What makes you say that?" Parvati asked with a frown.

"It was something Eleni was telling me a few weeks ago when she was working on an old artifact that had been infused with blood," Padma said pensively.

"Oh, yeah," Parvati said quickly, eyes lighting up in realization, "the bit about blood runes, right? We get our magic from our blood and dryads are really strong with their earth magic…" Her expression faltered. "You know I looked up all that stuff on ancient runes because of the thing tomorrow?"

Tomorrow was the day students from their school could shadow a witch or wizard in the workforce, anything from an Auror to a Healer, to learn more about their profession. They had to write a foot long essay on their experiences throughout the day. Harry was shadowing a friend of Eleni's, Gabriel Kairis, who had graduated the year before her and had gone into the Auror field, while Padma was following after Aunt Iva, and Parvati had chosen Eleni.

"Do you think she'll wake up?" she whispered, her lower lip wobbling and it was the first sight of their sister's vulnerability that they'd seen since Eleni had fallen 'ill'.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to offer a denial, but he found there was no need to as a groan escaped Eleni's lips and her eyebrows drew together, unaware of the three pairs of eyes that snapped to her.

A hand lifted to rub at her face even before her eyes opened, and Harry's stomach lurched at the clear green color that they had always been, the color reflected in his own.

"I would _kill_  for some chocolate," Eleni muttered before the breath was forced out of her lungs by the sudden pile-on by her younger siblings.

"You're awake!" Padma sobbed in relief. "W-we were so  _wo-worried!"_

Eleni sat up on her bed with only a little difficulty, maneuvering so their crushing weight wasn't stabbing into her spleen before wrapping her arms around them, carding through Harry's hair, patting Parvati's cheek, and rubbing soothing circles into Padma's back. "I'm sorry," she said softly, "I didn't mean to scare you lot."

"Scared?  _Psh_ , we weren't  _scared!"_

"Nope!"

Harry and Parvati shook their heads furiously in denial, but Padma didn't bother.

Eleni spared them all a smile that was so gentle that all three blushed.

"How're you feeling?" Harry asked quickly once they'd released her.

"Tired, ironically," Eleni hummed thoughtfully, fingers moving over the flesh of her arm in a thoughtful motion and for a moment it seemed as though thin golden-brown tracery was mapped over her skin, but it left as quickly as it came. "So…which one of you is going to volunteer yourself to make something for your older sister to eat!"

"Me!"

"No _, me!"_

" _I'll_  do it!"

Eleni watched them vault out of the room in amusement before sitting up completely in bed, swinging her legs over the side and rubbing at a spot on her chest right over where her heart was, an expression of befuddlement on her face before she shook her head and cleared her thoughts.

It was a new day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will feature the conflicts between the British and Greek Magical Embassies as the two governments come together to work on the Nefertiti find, which means that Bill will make an appearance, so that's exciting…
> 
> I hope you all like Achlys, I think she's pretty rad for a spirit of misery and woe.


	7. Department of Curse-Breaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all the new readers and reviewers, welcome! Thank you for showing your love for this fic, it makes me really happy, even though I know it won't be as popular as Serpent Tongue or Looking Beyond, given the kind of story it is.
> 
> I hope you all liked how I did the scene with Achlys, I had actually been planning to use a different spirit, but since misery and woe was something that Eleni could identify the most with, that's how it went.

Eleni lifted her glasses to hover in front of her eyes, squinting through them. Looking into them gave her a headache, but it was only because she was squinting.

She rested them on her nose, and the headache gradually faded. Her eyesight wasn't as blurry as it had been, but her Mum had always said her sight was so terrible because of how much she studied.

A sigh left her as she narrowed her eyes from behind them, her disappointment clear.

Eleni had been hoping that becoming a hamadryad would clear her vision completely, but it seemed some things just weren't meant to be.

Beggars couldn't be choosers, she had to concede as she straightened the flowing green dress that went to her knees, made of a material that was as green as her eyes, before dragging her hands into her hair, holding it up briefly before deciding to leave it down.

"British wizards," Eleni muttered to herself, "who ever thought that was a good idea?"

Of course, she had nothing against Bill, who would be working with her team, but Magical Britain in general wasn't well liked by the Greek Isles, the Department of Curse-Breaking in particular had many reasons to keep well away from them.

The sun was barely up and it was still at least an hour before she had to wake up her siblings.

Aurors and Healers started the earliest, and technically speaking Eleni was always rather early for work, but that was because she had to get her siblings up for school every day. When they went off to Hogwarts she might get to sleep in an hour or two more than she typically did.

Sunlight shone through the window to paint across the floor with a streak of orange.

Eleni's room was easily the cleanest in the house, especially since Padma had a habit of leaving all her books everywhere, Parvati always had clothes thrown about, and there was always at least one print of dirt on Harry's floor.

Her paintings were kept in the Paint Room and her photos were still hanging up in the dark room since the previous night (Eleni had been too busy recently to get them developed), all her work-related projects were kept between her overly-large office at the Department and at Villa Mer. All of Eleni's clothes hung neatly in the closet and her cosmetics were a little out of order at the vanity, but that wasn't unusual, especially since she had a few tubes of acrylic paint out to use on her skin (for artistic needs, Beniamin often said), and the painted lotus blossom on the inside of her lower arm hadn't faded from the previous night.

The door burst open suddenly and Parvati barreled into the room like a blur of black and red hair, holding up two very different outfits.

"I don't know what to wear!" she bemoaned.

"Darling, you're worrying far too much," Eleni remarked. "No one at the Department is going to care what you wear."

Parvati groaned loudly, throwing back her head in exasperation. " _Ugh!_  You're no help!" And she left her older sister blinking blankly at where she'd been left.

"Anxiety," Eleni decided, more to herself than to anyone else as she sat on the bed, pulling short heeled boots over her ankles and standing up once more.

For a brief few moments Eleni caught a glimpse of something in the mirror, an image of a young girl with golden eyes who smiled briefly before the image faded.

Eleni raised a hand to rub at her chest, directly over the spot where her heart was, but there was no pain, nothing like what she had experienced two days ago.

There were no cuts from where her mortal blood had spilled only to be replaced by that of a hamadryad's, there were no golden-brown markings spread across her body and her body did not glow like it had in the terrible dream Eleni had had the night before.

She had been glowing red, and all Hope could think about was freshly spilled blood.

_"You, Eleni, child of earth and Death himself are the thing the Erebeals fear the most. You are their Downfall, the monster in the closet to Erebeals…and they have been waiting for you for a long time. Killing you would ensure that there was no true opposing force equal to Athanas in strength."_

Eleni didn't want to be something that was feared, that had never been her idea of a good way for her to be remembered.

What she wanted to be was a famous Rune Analyst, the top of her field, and she didn't care how long it took her, she was going to get there, she was already well on her way and nothing was going to stop her.

"Eli, do I really have to wear scrubs?" Padma's complaining voice floated down the hall to Eleni who jerked quickly out of her thoughts in time for her younger sister to be framed in her doorway with an irritated frown on her lips.

The Healers at Asclepius Memorial Hospital all wore scrubs similar to their Muggle counterparts, only their scrubs were lavender for interns and Healers-in-training and purple for Healers (which was better by far than the lime green robes that British Healers wore, Aunt Iva and their Mum had always said)

"They look good on you," Eleni promised with a smile.

Padma narrowed her eyes at her sister before looking down at the lavender scrubs that had been shrunk to actually fit her. "Really?"

"I don't have to wear anything special," Harry mentioned deviously as he walked past and Padma glared before racing after him.

Oh, it was going to be a long day.

* * *

"Why is the Department of Curse-Breaking so big?" Parvati asked as they walked towards the building that had a very obvious Greek look about it, just like the Ministry's main building, only much better, because the Department dealt with ancient history and looking the part made sense.

"There's a lot of people that work there," Eleni said, noticing Parvati wasn't writing anything down; maybe she was saving up for the good stuff.

"A lot of Curse-Breakers and Rune Analysts?"

"Some," Eleni conceded, "and then we've got a few coordinators and researchers that find us jobs, sometimes it's for digs, sometimes it's to assist Aurors when they find artifacts during cases or on victims of violence."

"Have you ever worked in crime?" Parvati asked her curiously.

"Crime isn't really my forte," Eleni said with distant eyes, and it didn't take long to for Parvati to gather where her mind had gone.

"Eleni, looking good, my friend," Samuel winked at her when she came through the door, signing in at his desk that was articulate chaos, as he liked to say.

"Whatever you say, Samuel," Eleni responded, rolling her eyes as she signed her name and jotted down the time before pointing Parvati towards the visitor log. "This is Parvati."

"I'm Samuel," the man gave Parvati a wink of her own that made the dark-skinned girl flush brightly, "I get your sister the information for her special projects…I'm going to guess you're Red."

"Red?" Parvati asked in confusion, looking to Eleni who shook her head in exasperation.

"Really, Samuel?" she asked dryly.

"We color-code the younger Demetrious," Samuel told Parvati, leaning forward on his desk, "you're Red, your sister's Blue, and your brother's Green."

"What about Eli?"

"Eleni is the original, she gets to keep her name," Samuel grinned before Eleni managed to steer her sister away from him.

"He's nice," Parvati said, before hinting, "and very cute."

"I suspect his boyfriend thinks so too," Eleni hazarded an agreement and Parvati's eyebrows rose in surprise, but she took it in stride.

"But you know who thinks you're cute?" she pressed.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Eleni replied, stopping outside the clear glass wall and door that led into her office to pull a thick packet and a few letters from her mail cubby that had been delivered in the night.

"Fred Weasley," Parvati informed her cheerfully and Eleni's grip on the door slipped and she almost crashed into it before wrenching it open and ushering Parvati inside.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she said with certainty as she pulled the white lab coat up over her shoulders, fixing her ID badge to clip to the pocket over one breast.

"Uh-huh, sure," Parvati's eyes glittered knowingly in a way that used to irritate Eleni (she would sell her left kidney to find out if Parvati was actually a Seer).

"Don't you have some questions to ask me for your assignment?" Eleni asked, skating over her sister's words with ease.

Parvati grinned widely, removing a few leafs of paper stapled together with questions evenly spaced to allow space for Eleni's answers.

"What do Rune Analysts do?" she recited, poising her pen as she perched in the seat before Eleni's desk.

"Well, the name is pretty straightforward," Eleni snorted. "We analyze runes. Rune Analysts deal more with research of ancient cultures."

"But don't you have to be a Curse-breaker first?" Parvati asked, jotting down a few notes and then sucking on the end of her pen.

"Curse-breaker is more of an umbrella term," Eleni said, speaking slowly so that Parvati could catch everything. "Everyone in the Department is technically a Curse-breaker, but the ones who want to go more in depth are the Rune Analysts, but not all Curse-breakers end up as Rune Analysts; they just like the adventurous side."

"Do you?"

"Oh, absolutely," Eleni grinned, "but I'm holding off on agreeing to assist at any dig sites until you, Pads, and Harry are all in Hogwarts and I've got some free time."

Parvati's pen stilled. "Does that make you mad?" she asked her quietly.

"Of course not," Eleni said, shaking her head profusely. "You three are going to be at Hogwarts for most of the year; I'd like to spend what time I've got when you're here actually with you."

A pleased flush erupted across Parvati's cheeks, and she ducked her head so that Eleni wouldn't see, though it didn't seem to work very well.

"Have you made any finds?" she read off.

"A few small ones," Eleni admitted, "but the one that myself, Pati, and Beni were made famous for was the rediscovery of Brauron."

" _Really?"_  Parvati's eyebrows rose high on her forehead and Eleni laughed.

Her job paid very well, but the bonus each of the Rune Analysts got for discovering where all the items of value in Brauron were hidden was quite substantial. They had even made the front page of The Curse-breaking Column, both for their discovery and being among the youngest to make such a discovery.

Eleni didn't really tell them much about what she did at work, Parvati thought she maybe was channeling their mother in that aspect, the whole not bringing work home and all.

"Really," she said, "and everyone's working on the same project, trying to find Nefertiti's tomb, but there's no guarantee that we'll find it."

"Would you want to?" Parvati asked, jotting down notes so fast that ink stained her fingertips.

"Hades, yes," Eleni replied with a grin. "Could you imagine what kind of information a find like that would yield?"

A dazed look overtook her eyes.

Others might have been in it for the gold, but Eleni was all for furthering what they knew of runes and rune study and ancient history.

"Would you ever consider a different occupation?" Parvati asked.

"No," Eleni said with certainty. "Of course, I love to make art, but ancient history is where my real gift is."

If Parvati wondered whether that was partially due to the pithos her sister had found years ago, she did not ask.

* * *

Harry showed up at around a half hour after Eleni and Parvati's initial arrival, tagging after Gabriel Kairis with a smile on his face.

"No take backs," Parvati said, jabbing her finger in his direction and her brother rolled his eyes.

"Eleni!" Gabriel called, disregarding the siblings' attitudes towards each other as he waved towards Eleni.

"Gabriel,  _darling_ ," Eleni drawled, crossing her arms as she came closer, "showing up when you know Pati and Beni aren't in…what's a girl to think?"

Gabriel gave her a smile that was halfway between being sheepish and being a grimace. The breakup between Gabriel and Hypatia had been messy, even if it had been a few months since then, and Beniamin had never really taken to him (Eleni suspected it was jealousy).

"I couldn't resist your beautiful face, Eleni," Gabriel disagreed, kissing her cheek in greeting as she did the same.

"You're a liar," Eleni replied, rolling her eyes. "What can I do for you?"

"I've got a criminal in possession of a corpse," he told her without preamble.

Eleni arched an eyebrow before uttering a dry response. "Well…isn't that something…an  _Auror_  with a  _corpse_  on his hands."

"Make fun of me all you want," Gabriel sniffed, "But I've got high-quality scans that you might want to have a look at…there's some rune-y stuff I'm sure you'll like."

"Aw, darling, you give me the best gifts," Eleni responded with a wide grin before extending a hand for the package. "Give them here and let me work my magic."

Gabriel handed it over without much of a thought and she spared a smile to her younger brother. "Having a fun day, Harry?"

"So far," Harry replied with a wide grin, "Gabriel's cool."

Gabriel winked as they followed Eleni up onto the illuminated platform that Eleni's team usually worked at. Eleni pulled the scans free from the packaging, spreading them across the table and shining the light over them in order to shed light on them better.

The scans were of the corpse's chest cavity, into which runes had been inscribed on bones.

"Um...what the Hades?" Eleni couldn't help but mutter to herself.

"That's what I said!" Gabriel added, bobbing his head and leaning over the scans. "I have no idea how –or even why– someone would want to carve runes into their ribs."

"Well, it's not as uncommon as you think," Eleni mused, pulling out a marker to translate directly onto the scan. "Most high powered individuals had it performed on them, like pharaohs, kings, and emperors, they believed it would help them in the afterlife or the Underworld (whichever one they believed in). Sometimes they give the person power, but that's more typical with Blood Runes...this is a message, however, it has no power to it."

"You can read it, I'm guessing," Gabriel surmised.

"Of course I can read it," Eleni said, looking just a little insulted that he'd asked such a thing and Harry and Parvati giggled beside her.

The words were written in an ancient dialect of Greek, but ancient dialects were Eleni's specialty.

P-I-T-H-O-S-I-N-D-A-N-G-E-R

A frown darkened Eleni's face and Gabriel was quick to pick up on it. "What is it? What does it say?"

"It's a message," Eleni said blandly. "' _Pithos in danger, keep Keeper close'_."

"What does that even mean?" Gabriel asked, but a pair of green and brown eyes had jumped to Eleni's.

Aigeiros had painted a rather vague picture for them, but the younger Demetrious had suspected that was on purpose. Being the very mysterious person that Aigeiros was (that hadn't been very hard to pick up on), getting any information out of her while Eleni had been unconscious had been a trial and mostly for nothing.

The Demetrious knew the basics: The pithos that contained all the evils of the world and Hope herself existed, and the current Keeper of the pithos was Eleni.

"It means there's a possibility that your criminal is an Erebeal, Gabriel," Eleni said without a single change in expression, voice tone, or even blinking.

Parvati marveled at her ability to do that, because at the mere mention of Erebeal, she had released a squeak and Harry had turned into a bundle of tension.

Gabriel's eyes widened as Eleni focused on straightening the scans and shoving them quickly back into their packaging. "You're sure? I mean, you are the expert on Erebeals—"

Her knuckles were white as the skin was drawn tight over them. It was just a touch insensitive, but Gabriel had no way of knowing just how much she hated being well known as being the only one able to kill Erebeals in a few centuries.

"I suppose anyone else that has crossed paths with them has ended up dead," she said flatly and Parvati swallowed thickly and Harry looked down.

Gabriel must have realized he was overstepping a boundary and he hastily backtracked. "Right, sorry, I shouldn't've…"

"Its fine," Eleni said, handing the package back to him with a smile that was very empty. "Let me know if you need any more translating, I'd be happy to help."

"I'll keep it in mind," Gabriel promised before nudging Harry in the direction of the main doors.

Once the doors had swung shut at their heels, Parvati rounded on her elder sister. "So, what was that all about?"

"What was what all about?" Eleni asked, eyes narrowing slightly as she looked down to her brown-eyed sister.

"Someone carved a message about you into their ribs," Parvati said, making sure to keep her voice low as Eleni cast her a sharp glance. "Why didn't you tell Gabriel?"

"Because, my status as the Keeper is relatively unknown, and I'd like to keep it that way, especially since I haven't completely managed being the Keeper." She tugged on a dark strand of Parvati's hair. "I want to keep you lot safe, so keep this in the family, all right?"

"Okay," Parvati said, though her confusion was still quite clear.

* * *

"The Department of Curse-Breaking is hiring kids? You've  _got_  to be  _kidding_."

Bill Weasley could no longer count on his hands the number of times he'd been annoyed by his superiors, and the subject of Greece's sometimes controversial way of running things was almost always a topic spoken in Gringotts.

He honestly couldn't see what was so wrong with it; the former students from Athene Academy were highly intelligent and were quite successful in the fields they entered into.

Eleni was one of those students.

He remembered when they were both younger and Eleni always had a book tucked into her side, even when she was off playing with the twins, but Bill hadn't seen much of her for the past few months, both due to him being busy working for Gringotts and because of the death of Eleni's mother, which had caused the Weasleys to elect to give her space after the funeral; after all, she was now the guardian of her younger siblings.

She had been a mess at the funeral, but not as bad off as Harry, Padma, or Parvati. Eleni's eyes had been rimmed with red and silent tears stained her cheeks, but she didn't have the same echoing sobs as the other three.

Now, Eleni looked like a different person.

Her hair was a golden blonde, which was the most surprising thing, because for as long as Bill could remember, Eleni had black curls. But she looked well, better since the funeral, at least. The lab coat with her ID looked at home over her shoulders and Bill noticed she'd forgone black for a green dress that brought out the color of her eyes from where they were behind her black-rimmed glasses.

The same green eyes that grew cold as they turned on the man that had spoken. "Some people recognize talent when they see it, the same cannot be said in your case."

The man was named Eric Smoulders and his ruddy cheeks turned a beet color, ready to retaliate but Eleni merely arched an eyebrow as a high-pitched giggle pierced the air.

Bill peered around Eleni's form, and sure enough, there was Parvati stuffing her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing straight out…it didn't seem to be working.

"Bill Weasley, with me," she called in the same cold tone that told Bill she wasn't actually annoyed with him but Eric.

The scowl melted when they left the annoyed grouping of Britons and Greeks that were making an effort not to be short with each other.

Parvati ducked after with a wide grin on her face; she had always liked Bill.

"I notice you have a small shadow," Bill mentioned with a slight smile.

Eleni's lips curled into a smirk. "Emphasis on small."

" _Hey!"_  Parvati complained elbowing her sister in the side and aiming a kick at Bill's ankle that just missed its target.

"We haven't heard from you in a couple months," Eleni commented as she led him to where Beniamin and Hypatia were complaining about something on the platform. "Gringotts keeping you busy?"

"Something like that," Bill admitted, "what about you?"

He didn't mention how the last time he had seen her had been at her mother's funeral, for which Eleni was grateful.

"The Department has a lot of demanding work," Eleni conceded as she dragged a few fingers through her hair, "and taking care of the troublemakers is turning into a full-time job."

"You know I can hear you, right?" Parvati muttered to Eleni's side and Bill watched the older of the Demetriou girls wrap an arm around her younger sister's shoulders.

"Parvati here is shadowing me for a day for an assignment for school," she mentioned, which explained her presence and Padma and Harry's absence.

"Not out yet?"

"Almost," Parvati grumbled, "but the essay counts for a lot of our grade."

"Bummer," Bill said with a grin and Parvati gave him a glower eerily like her sister's as they took the steps up to the platform.

"—All I'm saying is he's shifty—"

"Oh,  _please!_  You're just saying that because we used to  _date!"_

Eleni blinked and stared at the scene before her: Hypatia sitting with her limbs tightly crossed, as if the prospect of unraveling would be a trial, and Beniamin gesticulating wildly.

"What exactly is going on?" Bill wondered in confusion.

"Pati's ex showed up earlier," Parvati informed him, always in the know, or so it seemed. "Beni doesn't like him… _Hey_ , he's cute, why don't you date him?"

The latter part of the question was directed towards Eleni who couldn't help but smack her face with her hand.

"Parvati, I don't  _need_  a boyfriend," she uttered through gritted teeth.

"It's 'cause you're waiting for Fred, isn't it?" Parvati guessed wisely and Eleni blushed in time with the shattering of the table which was startling enough to make Bill jump and the two arguing Rune Analysts look up.

"When did you get here?" Beniamin asked in confusion.

"Is Parv still trying to set you up with people?" Hypatia asked with a smirk as Eleni repaired the table.

"She's trying, and  _failing_." Eleni shook her head in exasperation. "My track record with guys isn't too great."

Granted, the only guy she'd dated had been a psychopathic killer composed almost entirely of Darkness, but still.

"But that doesn't matter," she said, eager to move away from her current relationship status, "Bill is here, so we can get to work and you guys can stop fighting over Gabriel."

" _Ooh!_  We are not fighting over Gabriel!"

"We don't need Gabriel! Gabriel is a  _non-entity!"_

Eleni threw a despairing look towards Bill that read ' _you see what I have to put up with?'_

Oh, this was going to make for a fun assignment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More on Eleni's workplace in this chapter. Hopefully next time we'll have some Aigeiros scenes, because I really love her, she's my favorite character in this fic.
> 
> Parvati is trying and failing at playing matchmaker, and it's hilarious.
> 
> Gabriel is a thing of beauty, he just doesn't know it yet.
> 
> Beni and Pati are massive dorks.


End file.
